Twitter Bug Bounty Contest to offer $3500 cash prize for detecting algorithm bias

Twitter has announced a bug bounty contest to detect biases in the image-cropping algorithm. Citing it to be the “industry’s first algorithmic bias bounty competition,” the popular social network is offering cash prizes of up to $3500 (roughly Rs 2,60,300) to those who unearth algorithm bias.

Twitter Bug Bounty Contest: Who can participate, cash prize, and more

Twitter Bug Bounty Contest which is aimed to detect biases in its image-cropping algorithm has been launched for hackers and computer researchers. The initiative has been carried following the discovery of parti pris towards the Black people in the algorithm by a group of researchers.

Following severe backlash about image previews in posts of excluding Black people’s faces last year, Twitter in May mentioned that a study carried by three of its machine learning researchers found an 8 percent difference from demographic parity in favour of women, and 4 percent towards white individuals (via Reuters).

“In May, we shared our approach to identifying bias in our saliency algorithm (also known as our image cropping algorithm), and we made our code available for others to reproduce our work. We want to take this work a step further by inviting and incentivizing the community to help identify potential harms of this algorithm beyond what we identified ourselves,” Twitter said in its latest blog post.

Notably, the social media network hosted a Twitter Space Conversation on Friday at 1:30 PM PT (2:00 AM IST) to discuss the challenges on this aspect with the folks who have helped bring forth the issue. As for the Bug Bounty Contest rewards, Twitter said the winners will be announced at the DEF CON AI Village workshop on August 8. Here’s how the cash prize will be distributed-

$3,500 1st Place
$1,000 2nd Place
$500 3rd Place
$1,000 for Most Innovative
$1,000 for Most Generalizable (i.e., applies to the most types of algorithms)

Participants who win the contest will receive the reward via HackerOne, Twitter noted. However, for those who submit a report about algorithmic biases to Twitter outside of the competition, their report will be closed and marked as not applicable, the social media platform explained. For those interested in joining the contest can head to HackerOne page or click on this link.

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