Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#271

Post by dx87 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

paavoova wrote: post #257

hnbroseph wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a rather curious question... what prompted it?

The parent post? Evidently, for whatever reason, male applicants and coworkers are a problem for their organization, so they go out of their way and invest in "additional resources" to hire female candidates from the hiring pool. They're not hiring on merit, but on gender. How exactly do you hire for female candidates without discriminating against the "overwhelming" body of male applicants? I would be really interes…

If it's anything like conferences trying to increase diversity numbers, they don't specifically target one gender, they focus their recruiting efforts on sites and locations that typically have a much higher representation, like a girls college, or a girls hacker group. That way they aren't actively saying "we won't accept male applicants", but they ensure that 90% of the applicants will be from the target demographic.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#272

Post by beat » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

sol_remmy wrote: post #256

beat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, nobody thinks men are smarter than women. And it isn't true. So, let's think about why we see gender roles in employment. Why are there so few women software engineers? One possible explanation is that women just aren't smart enough. If you don't believe that (and I don't), then you need another explanation. Maybe it's because of sexism. But if you don't want to believe it's sexism (as the OP implied),…

> And that's where hands come up empty. Maybe anti-male sexism prevalent in the health care and education fields is causing women to prefer those fields. Fix the sexism in health care/education. Elementary teachers should be 50% men. Nurses should be 50% men. Instead those fields are 90%(!) women! That is a HUGE level of bias and discrimination

Possibility 1: Female-dominated fields discriminate against men.

Possibility 2: Those fields are female-dominated because they can't get into male-dominated fields.

So what do the pay and prestige look like for female fields, vs male fields? Well, take medical. Nurses (low prestige, low pay) are >90% female. Doctors (high prestige, high pay) are about 70% male.

This suggests to me that there's indeed a huge level of bias and discrimination, but not in the way you think.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#273

Post by jhfhhhf » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

kat wrote: post #269

macinjosh wrote: post #93

This will be unpopular but I don't care. What is the evidence that the source data for this 'AI' is biased because the men it came from did not want to hire women? Is there a reserve of unemployed non-male engineers out there? If so what evidence is there of that? Technical talent is both expensive and a rare commodity for tech companies. The non-male engineers I've worked with have always been exceedingly competent,…

"Untapped market of engineers" yes it exists. The majority of my female friends with STEM degrees ended up as high school teachers. I had several older people suggest to me that teaching should be my preferred career choice because it was more flexible than a programming job (wtf...) "every tech company would be taking advantage of it" - nope, no one is. I don't know why but my guess is its hard to admit you're doing…

Maybe being a high school teacher is simply more pleasant than working in tech to some people? I don't think your example shows there is an untapped talent pool.

Of course, in general, you can make a job more attractive (raise salaries, roll out red carpets, install slides...), and you will attract more people. That doesn't prove those people were an untapped talent pool.

Presumably there is a price that would make a high school teacher consider working in tech again. That doesn't imply companies should be willing to pay that price.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#274

Post by user812 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

HashHishBang wrote: post #117

Hold on here. This article seems to have buried a pretty important piece of information wayyy down in the middle of the text. > Gender bias was not the only issue. Problems with the data that underpinned the models’ judgments meant that unqualified candidates were often recommended for all manner of jobs, the people said. With the technology returning results almost at random, Amazon shut down the project, they said.…

The media is no longer reporting things. You can't make money with reporting. The media is actively creating narratives, and one of the narratives that people are fed nowadays is that women are victims.

Men and women are pitted against each other.

Due to the way the media has evolved people consume their own biases and most often just read the headlines.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#275

Post by jhfhhhf » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #12

This is a direct and clear example of bias which made it easy to flag the ML algorithm. But what about ML algorithms that are inducing benefits to groups in less obvious contexts? What about groups that are not so easily identified as being protected classes by simple, human-understandable model features? What about cases where the features are just merely correlated with a subpopulation of a protected class? If we'r…

Protected classes? Can I be a protected class? I don't think having protected classes is a good thing, tbh...

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#276

Post by beat » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

wetpaws wrote: post #270

jonny_eh wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are promoted quicker, and more often, than women.

Does it corelate with performance?

And how is performance measured?

Aggressive behavior is considered admirable in men, and deplorable in women. Many women I know have noted comments in their performance reviews about their behavior - various words that can all be distilled to "bitchy".

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#277

Post by dx87 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

MetalGuru wrote: post #234

crooked-v wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all stopped joining up around 1985. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

What came first? Was the cast of Revenge of the Nerds all males because nerds were males and art was depicting reality, or did only men start becoming nerds become this movie had an all-male cast? I get being envious of people who had a head start with computers and feeling behind. I had zero coding experience before my first CS class in college. It sucked, but I grinded through it. It's relatively easy to catch up w…

I'll start by saying that I agree that determination can overcome a late start, but familial and society pressures can be really difficult to overcome. My wife comes from a small southern town and wanted to be a writer and college professor, but was constantly ridiculed and chastized by teachers and family because she is a woman, so they said she should just be a nurse, or get married and be a housewife. Her family refused to help with her college education, and her dad and mom would tell her that she should quit her masters program to cook and clean while I was at work. She didn't listen to them, but a lot of her female cousins do, and just get stuck in shitty marriages and deadend jobs, never doing what they want.

Progamming is also manufactured to be a "male" profession. It used to be that researchers were males, and programming was considered womans work, like doing data entry. When companies like IBM discovered that the best programmers tended to be anti-social males, and that females tended to leave careers earlier to start a family, big tech companies focused all their recruitment on males until progamming became a "male" job. It's similar to how light beer used to be considered a womans drink, but beer companies started running ads showing football players and other masculine figures drinking it, and now it's acceptable for anyone to drink.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#278

Post by jhfhhhf » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #206

Dirlewanger wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's taking a little longer than it should, but people are finally starting to realize that the actual reason there aren't as many women in software is because they've chosen not to be. They're wired differently and therefore have different interests.

But there are fewer women in software now than there were 30 years ago. Are women today "wired differently" from their mothers? Single-generation changes in behavior aren't genetic. They're social.

Programming is very different from 40 years ago.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#279

Post by sol_remmy » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #272

sol_remmy wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's where hands come up empty. Maybe anti-male sexism prevalent in the health care and education fields is causing women to prefer those fields. Fix the sexism in health care/education. Elementary teachers should be 50% men. Nurses should be 50% men. Instead those fields are 90%(!) women! That is a HUGE level of bias and discrimination

Possibility 1: Female-dominated fields discriminate against men. Possibility 2: Those fields are female-dominated because they can't get into male-dominated fields. So what do the pay and prestige look like for female fields, vs male fields? Well, take medical. Nurses (low prestige, low pay) are >90% female. Doctors (high prestige, high pay) are about 70% male. This suggests to me that there's indeed a huge level of…

Possibility 1: Male-dominated fields discriminate against females.

Possibility 2: Those fields are male-dominated because they can't get into female-dominated fields.

Men do not work as teachers because the media has painted men as "sex crazed". Most mothers would be uncomfortable with having a male 4th grade teacher for their daughter.

Many women would be uncomfortable having a male gynecologist or a male nurse helping them deliver their baby.

> Doctors (high prestige, high pay) are about 70% male.

Sorry but this breaks your narrative: 60% of new MDs each year are female. However: female MDs are more likely to quit the profession or go part time in order to raise kids. Again, this might show anti-male discrimination because it is not socially acceptable for male doctors to quit work to stay home with the kids.

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The above suggests to me that there's indeed a huge level of bias and discrimination, but not in the way you think.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#280

Post by beat » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 7:29 PM UTC

zimablue wrote: post #228

beat wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are fewer women in software now than there were 30 years ago. Are women today "wired differently" from their mothers? Single-generation changes in behavior aren't genetic. They're social.

But you're not comparing the same thing generation to generation. The job of developer has changed massively, the number of developers, the expectations, the salary. Sociaety has also changed, and not just in culture but in income distribution, etc etc. If tomorrow we say that you have to do 30 chinups to be a waitress, and the job will involve regular fistfights then we count the number of waitresses by gender and s…

"The job of the developer has changed massively".

What, pray tell, has changed that made the job more attractive to men, and less attractive to women? You need to be able to answer that question if you're going to make a causal assertion.