Make Algorithms Accountable
nytimes.com
Make Algorithms Accountable
1–10 of 33 posts
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#2I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point.
On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be accountable to anyone for their decisions (unless they contractually agreed to be), so I have no issue with e.g. a bank making loan decisions with a computer. After all, if the bank's algorithm is innacurate, this actually hurts their bottom line (because they either deny good customers or accept bad customers), so there is a strong incentive to have good algorithms. On the other hand, no such incentive exists for e.g. sentencing.
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#3I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point. On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be…
banks and other financial institutions have certainly been punished for their bad decisions in the past. Definitely don't see anything wrong with letting banks do whatever they want.
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#4"In Wisconsin, for instance, the risk-score formula was developed by a private company and has never been publicly disclosed because it is considered proprietary. This secrecy has made it difficult for lawyers to challenge a result."
Shouldn't that on the contrary make it extremely easy for lawyers to argue that the score evidence should be thrown out?
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#5I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point. On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be…
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#6I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point. On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
But as he said, there is no reason for them to do such policies. They just hurt the bottom line and benefit their competitors. Statistical algorithms are not prejudiced. They just want to make the most accurate predictions possible.
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#7I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point. On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
Yes, this was a viable solution back in the day because there was a 90% chance (made up number, but you get the idea) that denying someone from a redlined district was a good financial choice, and it was too expensive to do a detailed analysis to determine if an applicant was in the other 10%. With the automated credit checking and statistical analysis available these days, this isn't really an issue anymore. Banks can afford to do a more detailed check of each applicant, and they will, because failing to do so would be an economic disadvantage.
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#8I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point. On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be…
banks and other financial institutions have certainly been punished for their bad decisions in the past. Definitely don't see anything wrong with letting banks do whatever they want.
There's a difference between punishing people for bad actions and allowing the government to demand justification for every single action they take.
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#9It's tremendously disheartening to see the mainstream media repeating ProPublica's lies. They ran a statistical analysis. Their R-script said that bias was statistically insignificant. So they repeated a bunch of anecdotes in the story and left that part of the analysis out.
Reporting null results won't get you cited by the NYT, I guess.
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....
The power of the media to push a socially convenient lie is pretty amazing.
Re: Make Algorithms Accountable
#10I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point. On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be…
I disagree. There's no evidence that human judges are less biased or more accurate. There are studies that have shown unattractive defendants get twice the sentences as a attractive ones. Not to mention race. There are studies that show judges give much harsher sentences right before lunch, when they are hungry.
Judges are not better at predicting recidivism than even very crude statistical algorithms. Sentences are basically arbitrary anyway.
Algorithmic sentencing may not be perfect. But humans are algorithms too, and they are way less perfect. Humans don't have transparency either. Unless you want to propose putting judges in MRI machines while they make sentences.
Anyway no one has seriously proposed that algorithms should decide sentencing. Only that they make recommended sentences to the judge. Who overrules the algorithm about 20% of the time.