ThoughtWorks Technology Radar Reveals Urgent Need for Increased Machine Learning Transparency
Data scientists urged to make explainability a key selection criteria of machine learning models
November 20, 2019 Chicago - Today, ThoughtWorks, a global software consultancy, released Volume 21 of Technology Radar, a bi-annual report based upon ThoughtWorks’ observations, conversations and frontline experiences of solving its clients’ toughest business challenges. The latest edition highlights how emerging tools such as What-If and techniques such as ethical bias testing make machine learning (ML) more intelligible, why software development should be regarded as a team sport, how to navigate the increasingly competitive cloud marketplace and the evolution towards governance as code.
“One of the most important topics on this year’s Technology Radar is machine learning explainability,” says Dr. Rebecca Parsons, chief technology officer at ThoughtWorks. “Machine learning tools are used to make life-impacting decisions, however many of these models are inherently opaque. This is problematic when people need to know how a decision was made. Similarly, if the training process isn’t open, there’s a risk of introducing prejudice, sampling, algorithmic or other bias into a machine learning model.”
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To combat issues with machine learning and explainability, ThoughtWorkers urge business leaders and IT managers who oversee machine learning ecosystems to increase the diversity of their development teams to reduce unintentional risks in ML models, and to use tools that can reduce algorithmic bias.
Other noteworthy themes included in the Technology Radar Vol. 21 include:
- Interpreting the Black Box of ML. Machine learning is making more decisions, but its computations are still difficult to understand. Introducing tools to increase transparency and assembling a diverse team of developers is essential to combat ML’s black box.
- Software Development as a Team Sport. Tools and techniques that isolate members of software teams from one another hamper feedback and collaboration. Rather than focusing on individualistic memes like “10x engineers,” innovation thrives by pulling separate specializations into collaborative and cross-functional “10x teams.”
- Cloud: Is More Less? As the major cloud providers have achieved near parity on core functionality, competition has moved to the extra services they can provide. In their haste to compete, new services are being delivered to the market with rough edges and incomplete features, so don’t assume that all services are of equal quality.
- Protecting the Software Supply Chain. As the software development ecosystem becomes more automated, organizations should resist the ivory tower governance rules that require lengthy manual inspection and approval, and embrace automated processes.
ThoughtWorks’ Technology Radar is released twice a year, but ThoughtWorks encourages other companies to apply Radar-like thinking year-round to critique their own technology landscape.
“By discussing the blips for our Technology Radar, we identified a most precious value: knowledge (about what works well and what attempts were in vain),” says Thomas Spillecke, IT architect of cloud applications at Porsche. “The Technology Radar preserves our knowledge — but only works if we update it regularly.”
Visit ThoughtWorks.com/radar to explore the interactive version or download the PDF version.
About ThoughtWorks
We are a software consultancy and community of passionate purpose-led individuals, 7000+ people strong across 43 offices in 14 countries. Over our 25+ year history, we have helped our clients solve complex business problems where technology is the differentiator. When the only constant is change, we prepare you for the unpredictable.
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