More timely than ever:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Power_and_Human_Reaso...
Sentenced by Algorithm
41–50 of 61 posts
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make really good points. Life is bizarre and human culture is extremely contradictory and difficult to quantify. And what's worse our definition of 'fair' maybe advancing just like culture is constantly advancing. African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s when they we're considered less than a full person by the legal system for example. And maybe in the future drug offense…
> African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s Fucking hell , man.
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Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#43I miss any discussion about the elephant in the room: On what data does a potential algorithm base its decision? Who puts in that data? If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source), you can game it by manipulating the data it gets to see (or not) and how the specific wording is. Can the algorithm generate and ask questions by itself? Again that would be pointless if you know the algorithm -…
It has been shown many times that if you know the human making the decisions, you can game it by knowing the person, or anything from having a preexisting relationship with them, being famous, dependence (e.g. they're a tenant of you, or a landlord), planting ideas, ... Most of these are not illegal, or even possible to avoid.
And then, of course, there's racism, nepotism and outright bribery.
Humans, under the best of circumstances, are known to be unfair. Can an algorithm really be that much worse ?
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't see any problem with the "may have"?
I think what OP meant is "if the algorithm were designed (or perhaps implemented) in the 1700s according to standards of fairness held by those in power at that time, then it might have treated African Americans unfairly (despite being an algorithm)". I'm not a mind reader but that seems to make some sense given the context of the discussion.
You don't have to go back to the 1700s to find African Americans being treated poorly by the judicial system.
It's a weird shifting of the sands that isn't necessary to the conversation, when the context is a subject that is causing real harm now.
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#45I miss any discussion about the elephant in the room: On what data does a potential algorithm base its decision? Who puts in that data? If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source), you can game it by manipulating the data it gets to see (or not) and how the specific wording is. Can the algorithm generate and ask questions by itself? Again that would be pointless if you know the algorithm -…
It has been shown many times that if you know the human making the decisions, you can game it by knowing the person, or anything from having a preexisting relationship with them, being famous, dependence (e.g. they're a tenant of you, or a landlord), planting ideas, ... Most of these are not illegal, or even possible to avoid. And then, of course, there's racism, nepotism and outright bribery. Humans, under the best…
You miss the point. We don't have a computer process that establishes factors such as the level of remorse expressed by the offender or their claimed motive, whether their misinterpretation of the relevant law is plausible or not, or the magnitude of the harm caused to the victim or whether the plaintiff's claim of monetary losses suffered is plausible or not so the "algorithm" is a thin veneer over a human determining which factors are and aren't relevant... so you get exactly the same level of bias before plus noise from the human judge making these determinations not knowing exactly how the algorithm works and a false claim of greater impartiality.
It's probably even worse if you try to pull the human out the loop altogether and throw an ML black box at the testimony, which doesn't understand the actual situation the defendant describes at all but does pick up the statistical association between African American vernacular words used and higher sentences in its training corpus. Much easier to train a model that picks up the prejudice in sentencing factors than the situational nuance...
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#46I miss any discussion about the elephant in the room: On what data does a potential algorithm base its decision? Who puts in that data? If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source), you can game it by manipulating the data it gets to see (or not) and how the specific wording is. Can the algorithm generate and ask questions by itself? Again that would be pointless if you know the algorithm -…
> If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source)If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source)
Hah, no chance any of the sources to these things will ever be public.
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#47Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#48I miss any discussion about the elephant in the room: On what data does a potential algorithm base its decision? Who puts in that data? If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source), you can game it by manipulating the data it gets to see (or not) and how the specific wording is. Can the algorithm generate and ask questions by itself? Again that would be pointless if you know the algorithm -…
> If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source)If you know how the algorithm works (and this one must be open source) Hah, no chance any of the sources to these things will ever be public.
Well, just throw the constitution in the bin then (any democratic constitution, really). Might be fine for dictators though, getting rid of those unreliable judges.
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I read it, as a native speaker, I read "treated poorly by the algorithm" as being a term for the behavior of culture and systems of the time, and not a hypothetical algorithm from the future that took as input the culture of the time and made decisions about fairness. I think it was the use of "the algorithm" and not "an algorithm" that most affected my reading there - "poorly by an algorithm" comes across, to m…
My first reading as a native speaker was that "the algorithm" meant "the Man". But after several readings, I think he meant that this algorithm would categorize someone who was legally considered less than a citizen as a more likely recidivist. Which is an interesting point. Particularly in the US where there's a notion of illegal immigrants having already broken the law. Would this algorithm consider them to be more…
Yes! Exactly. If humans wrote an algorithm, to determine sentencing of crimes, it's possible that biases and predjudices of the time would be included in the algorithm because they don't realize or don't want to admit that their current ways are unfair.
Much like the constitution did!
But the constitution can be amended to be more fair and so the abstract sentancing algorithm, whatever it may be, would have to be amendable as well.
I hope that statements not racist!
Re: Sentenced by Algorithm
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first reading as a native speaker was that "the algorithm" meant "the Man". But after several readings, I think he meant that this algorithm would categorize someone who was legally considered less than a citizen as a more likely recidivist. Which is an interesting point. Particularly in the US where there's a notion of illegal immigrants having already broken the law. Would this algorithm consider them to be more…
I thought the US was somewhat unusual in its lax treatment of illegal immigration. However lying to or sneaking past border officials to enter a country is literally a crime yes (certainly for foreign nationals, and probably not kosher for citizens to do either). Though entering on a visitor visa and overstaying is just a civil violation with a civil penalty (deportation). If a citizen had a record of using false ide…
Interesting example of how context can affect the sentencing and seriousness of the crime!