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Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

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Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#151

Post by kyrieeschaton »

elvinyung wrote: post #72
kyrieeschaton wrote: post #57

I guess it worked for him to throw a hissy fit, but there's absolutely no reason to actually believe they're conditioning on gender. It could be "it's a new product, we randomly assign credit limits to see how it affects behavior". It could be "it's a community property state and we're overexposed to this household if we give the second card the same limit as the first". It could, realistically, be almost anything ex…

I mean, don't you think it's kind of a strawman to assume anyone thinks machines are explicitly sexist? It seems much more likely that whatever method they use to do feature selection on this obviously high-dimensional data just happens to end up picking something that was a proxy for gender. You can be implicitly biased without being aware of it. This is true for both humans and algorithms.

It is absolutely not a strawman. It is incredibly easy to find people granted authority by the state that will claim that, eg, mathematics per se is an instance of exclusionist masculine thinking. It's even easier to find instances where people granted authority by the state will claim that any discrepancy in outcomes is ipso facto intentional.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#152

Post by fzeroracer »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #110
heartbreak wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s assume that the tweet author is reasonably well-versed in business operations, since he is himself a very successful businessman.

Sure. Let's assume I am very well versed in other pertinent domains of knowledge, like social psychology and the tendency for people to get mad as hell about social justice issues and leap to ugly conclusions that fit their SJW narrative about evil in the world that can be conveniently lumped under a one word heading, like sexism. Let's further assume that this is actually actively counterproductive, so it's reasonab…

I'm not sure how them possibly being a 'SJW' has any relevance to this argument, as that's essentially a dismissive personal attack and a rather shitty one at that.

Given my experience with ML algorithms having bias against minorities, I think it's fair to assume the worst when it's a black box algorithm. You feed it bad data, and you get bad results out.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#153

Post by burnte »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #123
zamalek wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> credit scores for women skew lower than for men. Which is crazy, because for most of my guy friends (myself included), saying that their significant others/women make significantly better financial decisions is putting it far too lightly. I basically wasn't making decisions at all (besides savings) until my s/o set me right. This discrimination is tragic and disgusting.

Women tend to have lower incomes and lower net worths. Here is a recent article squeeing about women finally being willing to buy homes on their own: https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/the-rise-... One of the statistics in it: Single women can only afford about 39% of homes. Single men can afford more than half. Historically, couples with traditional marriages (primary breadwinner husband, wife whose…

> Women tend to have lower incomes and lower net worths.

Very true, because they aren't as smart and they don't work as hard.

No, wait, sorry, it's actually because there are stereotypes about women that aren't even remotely true that are reinforced decades after they were found to be offensive through institutional sexism such as the gender pay gap and the glass ceiling.

So, maybe the lower credit scores simply reflect the deck stacked against women in the workplace.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#154

Post by burnte »

kyrieeschaton wrote: post #136
burnte wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess it worked for him to throw a hissy fit, but there's absolutely no reason to actually believe they're conditioning on gender. There certainly is. Ignoring the anecdotal data of people replying to him who saw the same outcome, credit scores for women skew lower than for men. One of many sources: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/gend...

Except for 1) according to him, the bureau they were using for underwriting data indicated she had higher credit score 2) "conditioning on credit score which is correlated with gender" is not conditioning on gender. The algorithms that derive credit score from a set of credit data do not condition on gender.

> 2) "conditioning on credit score which is correlated with gender" is not conditioning on gender. The algorithms that derive credit score from a set of credit data do not condition on gender.

It does if the algorithm is based on flawed assumptions, or worse, fed data based on institutionalized sexism.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#155

Post by mcphage »

defen wrote: post #95
gyc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DHH said his wife actually had a higher credit score than him.

Doesn’t that concede the point that married couples can have different credit profiles? How much higher is her score? What is the max amount of credit GS will issue to a household? DHH has a history of acting righteously angry without having all the relevant facts.

> DHH has a history of acting righteously angry without having all the relevant facts.

Well, if you know a better way to get the relevant facts without throwing a fit on social media until hopefully a state AG takes note, then maybe we’ll all do that next time instead.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#156

Post by DoreenMichele »

burnte wrote: post #153
DoreenMichele wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women tend to have lower incomes and lower net worths. Here is a recent article squeeing about women finally being willing to buy homes on their own: https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/the-rise-... One of the statistics in it: Single women can only afford about 39% of homes. Single men can afford more than half. Historically, couples with traditional marriages (primary breadwinner husband, wife whose…

> Women tend to have lower incomes and lower net worths. Very true, because they aren't as smart and they don't work as hard. No, wait, sorry, it's actually because there are stereotypes about women that aren't even remotely true that are reinforced decades after they were found to be offensive through institutional sexism such as the gender pay gap and the glass ceiling. So, maybe the lower credit scores simply refl…

I'm plenty frustrated with actual sexism of the sort you and others here keep insisting is the entire explanation.

But, no, that's not remotely the entire story. Other factors that help suppress female income:

1. They tend to spend far more time on unpaid activities ("women's work") than men.

2. When moving to a new city, a man is very likely moving to a new job. This usually entails a pay hike. A woman is much more likely to be following her man's career to a new town. This typically involves taking a pay cut and derailing her career aspirations.

3. Men are more likely to pick a college that supports their career goals. Women are much more likely to attend whatever happens to be locally available and affordable.

4. Men who start businesses are typically making a career move. Women who start businesses are more likely to be starting a "lifestyle business" to accommodate other demands placed on their time and energy, such as special needs children.

I'm sure I could go on. I've read research on the topic for literally decades to try to understand where my life went wrong, but it's ultimately pointless since I can't cite specific sources, most of the members of HN aren't familiar with such stats and, no, just taking my word for it as a SME in the sorts of things that have negatively impacted my life is simply not anything anyone here will do.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#157

Post by toomuchtodo »

eropple wrote: post #113
toomuchtodo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenders can still realize a reasonable profit while ensuring people are not improperly discriminated against by machine intelligence. Effective regulation is possible. I would even be willing to serve a tour of duty standing up such a regulatory body, perhaps as a division of the CFPB. Throwing up your hands that government is ineffective entirely is unreasonable, just as asking for all models to be public is.

Effective regulation is possible, sure. Is effective regulation likely ? And is it made more or less likely by transparency? Heck, as I think about this further--wouldn't transparent models help realize those reasonable profits? If everybody's cards are on the table, doesn't that encourage the market to move towards perfect competition?

If you’re open to a conversation about what legislation would look like, I am receptive to collaboration.

The best people for public policy are the ones who don’t want the job, but do it because it’s necessary.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#158

Post by joemi »

tempsy wrote: post #94

What is it about this story that has triggered so many people (men) on here? Dear lord.

Its probably DHH's jumping to the conclusion that gender bias (whether intentional or not) is the only possible explanation for this credit discrepancy. Or it could be the fact that he expects customer support representatives to understand the inner workings of GS's risk calculations.

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#159

Post by kyrieeschaton »

burnte wrote: post #154
kyrieeschaton wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for 1) according to him, the bureau they were using for underwriting data indicated she had higher credit score 2) "conditioning on credit score which is correlated with gender" is not conditioning on gender. The algorithms that derive credit score from a set of credit data do not condition on gender.

> 2) "conditioning on credit score which is correlated with gender" is not conditioning on gender. The algorithms that derive credit score from a set of credit data do not condition on gender. It does if the algorithm is based on flawed assumptions, or worse, fed data based on institutionalized sexism.

I dare you to claim Goldman is using gender as an input variable for credit underwriting.

Since no one is actually doing this, we're back to something like "maybe (altho there's no evidence for this either) people indistinguishable from Mrs. DHH actually do look more likely to default, which is society's fault and thus Goldman should just take the hit".

Re: Viral Tweet About Apple Card Leads to Goldman Sachs Probe

#160

Post by mikestew »

rndgermandude wrote: post #80
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wouldn't it make perfect sense if they have dramatically different income? The implication in citing their joint filing status is they submitted identical incomes. They have the same address, assets, and she had a better credit score. She is also a woman.

If she applied after him getting his application approved, this might very well explain her tiny line of credit: the algorithm didn't look at him and her alone in isolation, but at both at the same time, saw a certain combined income, saw he already has a large line of credit issued and concluded "I am not giving them another 3000 bucks or whatever, they already got that, so let it be 50 bucks or something, the minim…

My wife and I fit that scenario. I was on the card beta. She applied (well, I applied for her) as soon as it went wide release. Exact same credit limit, she got a five percent lower interest rate. Applications were filled out identically, I did them both.
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