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Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

reuters.com

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

#421

Post by naasking »

beat wrote: post #310
naasking wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you assuming I have no idea of the data available? Because I question the default narrative? Because you're throwing out wild, unsupported speculation to salvage your narrative, and the original post of yours to which I replied had at least 4 elementary factual errors. > But I believe my explanation accounts for that - that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women. That's no…

Sexism kept women out of medicine and law for centuries. It's only very recently that this has changed. Women were not even admitted to Harvard Law School until 1950. I do think there's a universal component, though, as sexism is seen across virtually all cultures.

> Sexism kept women out of medicine and law for centuries. It's only very recently that this has changed. Women were not even admitted to Harvard Law School until 1950.

You're equivocating. You know very well that the type of sexism that kept women from working in virtually all professions, including law and medicine, is not the type of sexism we're discussing now.

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

#422

Post by gsich »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #417
gsich wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what is the purpose of this? At some point you want this thing to "discriminate" (or "select", if this is a better word) people based on what they have done in life. Which is not negative per se.

But you don't want it to select based on gender.

Would it though? A school name is essentially just that, no gender information there, even with the "women" prefix. If you discriminate other schools, you can do it too with those. FWIW there could be a difference in performance which the ML finds.

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

#423

Post by s73v3r_ »

gsich wrote: post #422
s73v3r_ wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't want it to select based on gender.

Would it though? A school name is essentially just that, no gender information there, even with the "women" prefix. If you discriminate other schools, you can do it too with those. FWIW there could be a difference in performance which the ML finds.

It would. Just because it's not explicitly looking for a "W" in the gender field doesn't mean it's not able to determine gender and discriminate based on that. The article and the discussion is all about how these things, despite not explicitly being told to discriminate based on gender, or race, or any number of factors, can still end up gathering a set of factors that are more prevalent among those groups, and discriminate against those people all the same.

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

#424

Post by gsich »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #423
gsich wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it though? A school name is essentially just that, no gender information there, even with the "women" prefix. If you discriminate other schools, you can do it too with those. FWIW there could be a difference in performance which the ML finds.

It would. Just because it's not explicitly looking for a "W" in the gender field doesn't mean it's not able to determine gender and discriminate based on that. The article and the discussion is all about how these things, despite not explicitly being told to discriminate based on gender, or race, or any number of factors, can still end up gathering a set of factors that are more prevalent among those groups, and disc…

>despite not explicitly being told to discriminate based on gender, or race, or any number of factors

Then this is completeley useless. You want this "AI" to discriminate based on a number of things. That's the whole point. You want to find people that can work for you. If a specific school or title is a bad indicator (based on what you hired now), then it just is that.

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

#426

Post by ramblerouser »

hamandcheese wrote: post #389
ramblerouser wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We did eventually find a few great female applicants, but it took a lot of work and a lot of time dedicated specifically to that goal. How is this not sexism? Replace female with male in the above quote and tell me it isnt sexist.

Diversity is generally accepted to be a positive thing. Targeting women specifically furthers that goal. Targeting men specifically furthers no goal. So yes, sexism is not symmetric. Same with race.

How much money and time goes into hiring more female septic tank cleaners? Garbage men? Construction workers? Truck drivers? If sexism isn't symmetric then feminism isnt about equality.

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

#427

Post by _Tev »

zaksoup wrote: post #355
_Tev wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's so much evidence to suggest that there is far more at play here than simply "engineering is laborious and dry [so women must not want to do the work]" that I'm willing to state it falls under wikipedia's citing rules for globally known knowledge: I don't need to cite that the capital of France is Paris any more than I need to cite this. What about citations proving that "software engineering when it was con…

What about citations proving that programming is dry, tedious, or boring? I am under no obligation to engage a comment made in bad faith as if it wasn’t.

> What about citations proving that programming is dry, tedious, or boring?

From what I've seen this is standard assumption by ordinary people. And it does not target only programming, any office job that involves "sitting at the computer all day" gets that reputation.

And that easily could have not been the case in the 50's (I really don't know). And the profession has clearly evolved (anecdotally: many think it has gotten worse). So your assumptions are really not that obvious. Sorry if that comes accross to you as "arguing in bad faith".

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

#428

Post by femidav »

gambler wrote: post #224
fuscy wrote: post #25

The eye opening thing here is not that the AI failed, but why it failed. At start the AI is like a baby, it doesn't know anything or have any opinions. By teaching it using a set of data, in this case a set of resumes and the outcome then it can form an opinion. The AI becoming biased tells that the "teacher" was biased also. So actually Amazon's recruiting process seems to be a mess with the technical skills on the…

The article didn't specify how they labeled resumes for training. You're assuming that it was based on whether or not the candidate was hire. Nobody with an iota of experience in machine learning would do something like that. (For obvious reasons: you can't tell from your data whether people you did not hire were truly bad.) A far more reasonable way would be to take resumes of people who were hired and train the mod…

This also means that if you hire unqualified women only because they are women, then your AI will have bias against women.

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

#429

Post by zaksoup »

_Tev wrote: post #427
zaksoup wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about citations proving that programming is dry, tedious, or boring? I am under no obligation to engage a comment made in bad faith as if it wasn’t.

> What about citations proving that programming is dry, tedious, or boring? From what I've seen this is standard assumption by ordinary people. And it does not target only programming, any office job that involves "sitting at the computer all day" gets that reputation. And that easily could have not been the case in the 50's (I really don't know). And the profession has clearly evolved (anecdotally: many think it has…

That's a fine assumption to be made by ordinary people but I think it's quite fair to respond to somebody commenting on hacker news as if they have more than a lay-person's understanding the technology industry.

Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing? You're not engaging with my points in any meaningful way. Can we be done with this thread?

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

#430

Post by _Tev »

zaksoup wrote: post #429
_Tev wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about citations proving that programming is dry, tedious, or boring? From what I've seen this is standard assumption by ordinary people. And it does not target only programming, any office job that involves "sitting at the computer all day" gets that reputation. And that easily could have not been the case in the 50's (I really don't know). And the profession has clearly evolved (anecdotally: many think it has…

That's a fine assumption to be made by ordinary people but I think it's quite fair to respond to somebody commenting on hacker news as if they have more than a lay-person's understanding the technology industry. Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing? You're not engaging with my points in any meaningful way. Can we be done with this thread?

Yeah, talk about arguing in bad faith, then move the goal posts (when lay people think the job is too hard / boring, they will not choose it when choosing education, seems pretty obvious?) and claim the other side is "arguing for the sake of arguing".

You are not engaging in debate in any meaningful way, maybe stop arguing on HN? You are not convincing anyone . . .

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