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NYC Announces Plans To Test Algorithms For Bias (betanews.com)
The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has announced the formation of a new task force to examine the fairness of the algorithms used in the city's automated systems. From a report: The Automated Decision Systems Task Force will review algorithms that are in use to determine that they are free from bias. Representatives from the Department of Social Services, the NYC Police Department, the Department of Transportation, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, the Administration for Children's Services, and the Department of Education will be involved, and the aim is to produce a report by December 2019. However, it may be some time before the task force has any sort of effect. While a report is planned for the end of next year, it will merely recommend "procedures for reviewing and assessing City algorithmic tools to ensure equity and opportunity" -- it will be a while before any recommendation might be assessed and implemented.
...that happens to be correct, do they throw the whole thing out to spare everyone's feelings?
So by "fair" they mean "unfair" ... since we can't have a mere algorithm making decisions based on silly facts and stuff. It might not produce the "right" outcomes.
If they want precrime algorithms and AI to ensure no one is smoking or drinking sugary beverages then more power to them, as long as they keep their technocratic dystopia confined to NYC they can do whatever they want.
"Well, the legislature, governor, and city council have to go..."
"Yes. Wait, we haven't even started yet!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Further example of mental ilness in high places.
...Affirmative Algorithms.
"The way up is the way down" - Heraclitus (Hera's Clit[or]us)
Put in a mandate that all government algorithms most be open sourced in an easily accessible fashion, and all data passed through them must also be easily accessed. This will enable 3rd parties, ANY 3rd party, not just contracted "companies" (usually in the pockets of the people making decisions) to audit the code and data for flaws.
One of the largest issues I've seen in the past with these systems is that they falsely assume correlation = causation. And quite often, the cause and effect are backwards, too. One example I always liked was that "overhead high voltage power lines caused health issues for those that live near them" - when once the data was updated with more inputs, it was discovered that it was an entirely different cause all together. High voltage power lines are unsightly, causing housing values around them to be below the average for the community. Poorer families were buying/renting them. Poorer families are more likely to have health issues due to financial constraints. In the end, the correlation wasn't causation, but each item both shared a similar root cause.
A potentially bias algorithm that test bias algorithm. I wonder.
A plan to have police respond to an area that has a high crime rate around 3 pm seems reasonable and in a way race is not involved. Gut the effect of such a plan is very racist in its consequences. Poor people do drug deals and prostitute on the side walks and they are easily caught so the area gets a high crime rate designation. Rich people frequently commit far greater crimes but it takes place behind mansion walls and usually goes unnoticed. On top of that the cops know that a bust on a rich person will result in expensive lawyers fighting for the guilty party whereas the poor get minimal legal help and no funding at all for investigations. often in a given area poverty and race are highly related so for a cop his promotions are much more likely to occur when he arrests poor people. So the effect of a seemingly innocent program can in its effect be severely racist. On top of that our legal system actually creates crimes. for example a burglar gets caught and needs a top notch lawyer. in his head it hits him that he will need to commit several crimes to pay for the lawyer so while he is out on bail he is breaking into more homes and businesses. Both our civil and criminal laws need a total new way of dealing with problems and the laws we have now belong in a trash basket.
The algorithms deal only in facts and data. Even if they WERE presenting biased results, there is not one human alive, not me, not you, not the almighty assholes in government, nobody, that can assess that bias fairly without throwing their own biases on top of the algorithm for comparison.
You need an algorithm to check the algorithms, but then you're right back to wondering where the bias comes from, the algorithm, or the creator of the algorithm.
And if this is literally just another chance to shove political correctness into result sets, then fuck the whole process. Stop trying to pretty up how ugly our motivations are.
Great, I'm sure there weren't other uses for a couple of six-figure salaries and all their staff for an indeterminable amount of time to learn if algorithms are racist.
This algorithm is hereby rejected. It shows an unfair bias toward the number 1, which appears twice as many times in the results as any other number!
It's the typical response you get from liberals when you point out that their reasoning doesn't match the world: reality is racist.
Try and bring crime statistics or other facts into a discussion about how weird it is that the areas with the most liberal voters are also the ones that, strangely, have the most crime, or that weirdly statistics proves that it's not racism, immigrants really do bring crime with them - and they'll just reply that "reality is racist."
This is the same thing. Of course the computer doesn't have any biases. It's a computer. It looks at data and computers results. You can't get any more unbiased than raw data. But it doesn't matter: "reality is racist" and we have to compensate...
Opportunity is created or denied by political will, not by algorithmic tools. Its what you do with the hammer that counts. For every nail, there is a mallet that is leverageable with equity. A counting hammer would be cool, though.
One problem I have about political use of the term "bias" versus the scientific use is that when policymakers (under public pressure) find that otherwise unbiased selectors or factors that produce groups or divisions of the population that are "biased", they feel that the algorithms are "wrong" or need to be fixed.
I happen to also be quite skeptical of the legitimacy of disparate impact policy, which states that even if a policy is facially neutral (not imposing rules or criteria associated with protected classes attributes), if it affects one group more than another it may be considered discriminatory or "biased".
While good in theory, I have real trouble about how "unbiased" principles are applied in practice.
People decide what variables to put in or not, what data to test on or not. Using an "algorithm" doesn't eliminate subjectivity, it removes it in the sense of setting it at a distance where it is out of people's minds even though it's still there.
is a complete joke as a public servant. Is there any limit to the ways he and his administration can come up with to waste tax dollars..
;)
Just my 2 cents
Based on what I've seen in recent years, a "racist" or "biased" output will be deemed to be any that results in a protected group being disproportionately represented, either too highly or too little depending on which outcome hurts it. No matter that, for example, a higher-than-normal rejection rate for loans for a group doesn't result in a lower-than-normal default rate on those loans (meaning the rejection were reasonable, not biased), it will be, definitionally, evidence of discrimination.
Is the person poor? Generational poverty? No job? Living in an area with an above average crime rate?
Who is committing the crime? What crimes? What policing method has best reduced that crime rate around the USA?
Make some maps of the city and fund some new police in the areas with crime.
Add some CCTV. Bring in the next gen IMSI-catchers to see who is talking with criminals. A better voice print system?
Start tracking crime down to a street and building level in real time.
Ask the FBI to provide some statistics on who is doing what crime, when and where. Find the predicable patterns for the police to work with.
Todays tech can map most of the problem areas and detect most of the repeat criminals.
The only bias is not funding the police to do their jobs. Stop looking for "bias" and start funding police work.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That is the whole damn point and only function of a neural net, including any brain's!
It groups input into patterns/memes, based on previous incomplete input (aka "prejudice"). All we do is act "prejudiced" based on anecdotal evidence all day long!
That does not imply hate!
Implying that it implies hate, *is* hateful though. At least fromy POV.
And my POV is all I have.
I can never know any absolute reality.
When people act like something is an absolute / unbiased view, all they mean is that it fits their own bias. Be it their personal one, or the one of the social group or swarm lifeform they are part of.
Conclusion: NYC wants to force everyone into their personal mold of thinking, and ne a good goose-stepping conformist. Be it SJW or Neocon or whatever cancer. I'm from a distant land. I don't know the local ruling mindset.
There's this. That doesn't seem very fair to me. Every bit of data fed into that algorithm was a fact though. Now, if some of those facts were choose... shall we say "selectively", well, that's fair. It's a free country right? Right?
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It exists, yes, but I'd hardly call it rampant (unless you're a millennial that lives by osmosis rather than actual experience, of course). Get out of your neighborhood and your state and actually live a little more often, and stop accepting everything your college professors and the media spoon feed you. Your bubble is showing.
"because racism is pretty rampant here in the US still"
Not really when you look at the diversity present in the US compared against any other country on the planet. Social media has distorted the entire situation to the point that prevents any rational discord on the entire subject. A small number of incidents have taken on the appearance of a problem out of control until you actually compare the number of incidents against the total number of people living in the country. When someone says that the police are killing X amount of black men you also need to ask how many white men were killed during the same time period. Social media is the social justice warriors and activists of all types to inflate the magnitude of their particular outrage of the day while hiding the truth. Social media only creates conflicts it doesn't solve conflicts. You cannot have a rational and productive conversation using 140 characters at a time and declare ideology victories by the number of "followers" or "likes". And we are talking about race, religion, and national origin. Contrary to popular belief the US is still the melting pot of the world. All the noise about illegal immigration hides the fact the thousands of people become nationalized US citizens every week in the US. All the non-stop complaints endlessly regurgitated about the US also hides the fact that millions of people are willing to do anything necessary to get to the US using all legal and illegal means. There are literally lines of people surrounding the US Embassy's in China hoping to score a US visa. The only people waiting in line to get into China are the North Koreans and even they are just trying to pass through on their way to some place better.
There are laws in the US to protect against racism but those laws are not going to matter to someone who is a racist. The laws are there to force the government institutions to guard minorities from illegal acts codified within the statutes. This includes empowering the government Labor Department to enforce the laws in the work place, the Department of Education to enforce the laws in regards to both private and public institutions, and the Justice Department to enforce the laws in every aspect of society. What these laws do not do is change someone from being a bigot and racist. There isn't a law capable of making that happen.
But terms like "institutional racism" just enflame the arguments on a personal level. The level that laws have no control over. It infers that there are those who succeeded only because of racism. And the idea of "financial restitution" to right the wrongs of the past just raises the animosity level even higher.
Racism! Racism! Racism! So that is the explanation? Sounds pretty simple, and no doubt there are all sorts of training, education, consciousness raising, rules, regulations, reports, graphs, ratios, inspections and oversight that you might suggest to address it.. (Along with many ardent comrades to perform the work!) Reminds me of something H L Menken said: "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong. "
The problem is that assigning all of the problem to "racism" is that you are going to be missing a huge problem that is out there, one that is very old, and whose effects are well know through the ages. And the worst part from a Progressive perspective? It is color blind. Nonetheless, you should consider the following, including the quote from former president Barack Obama.
New Report: Majority of U.S. Teens Don’t Live in Intact Families
. . . Overall, teenagers in intact families are more likely to be emotionally healthy, have higher self-esteem, and progress further in education. Boys who have grown up with their married biological parents are particularly less likely to have behavioral problems, such as heightened aggression or substance abuse. Teenage pregnancy rates are seven to eight times higher for girls whose fathers are absent. As President Obama clearly stated in 2008, the absence of a father is significant:
We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.
. . . In fact, children who do not have intact families are disproportionately concentrated in the lower third of the income scale. The FRC report reveals harsh realities for children from low-income communities. In Chicago, 86 percent of African American children don’t live with both of their married parents. Many poor neighborhoods across the U.S. show similar realities: 85 percent of children in Detroit and 64.5 percent of children in Richmond, Virginia, were born to single mothers.
How do you turn this around? The good news is that there are some amazing nonprofits whose goal is to help restore strong marriage. One example is First Things First in Richmond, which provides education programs that encourage active fatherhood and strengthen marriage in Richmond’s low-income communities. They teach adolescents and young adults the three keys to avoiding poverty: (1) graduate high school, (2) get married, and then (3) have kids. The order is important. Their results are real: More children are protected from the pain of broken families and the risks of poverty.
The advantage of working to build and sustain healthy families is that it pays dividends in many respects. The problems are not particularly nebulous and there are clear things to be done. Unfortunately, from some perspectives, the prospects for virtue signaling and outrage are not as good, hence indifference. Well, maybe not indifference.
Shapiro on why the Left loves broken families
The family is a bulwark against the State, so obviously if you are a Leftist who loves the big State you cannot stand strong, independent families.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I was going to meta-mod your comment as "-1 bullshit" but I thought I'd reply to it instead.
YES, there is institutional racism here in the U.S. Particularly in colleges and universities. And it has been in place for decades.
It is called "affirmative action". Studies have shown pretty conclusively that it has not worked. And the Supreme Court has signaled that it's probably on its way out.
There was a lot LESS racism in America before Obama got elected. I'm not going to rant about the reasons, but that's a simple fact. Racial tensions were so much higher when he left office than when he began, there is hardly any comparison.
Strangely, a lot of that racial tension has slacked off in the last year. Not all, but a good bit of it.
Why is that, do you think?
Racism in America ...
From my point of view , racism in America is visible in immigration policies.
I am not allowed to migrate to US because : I am too white, too male, too hetero and too European.
And too law abiding to join The Caravan or overstay my short visit to the US.
And those policies were introduced under progressive Clinton and Obama rules ....
Now I have an excellent example to show around when someone asks me what "whataboutism" means. Thanks!
I've always hated how the media reacted when Obama was President. For whatever reason some people act like it's 100% his fault... but I'd blame the media. Remember the incident where a black man was shot in his own house by the cops, responding to a call about a break in from his neighbors? I seem to recall the media reaction was something like this: Media: Mr President was this racist? Obama: We don't know that at this time. Media: Well what if it was racist? Obama: We don't know that it was. But that would be a terrible thing if it was. Media: PRESIDENT OBAMA CONFIRMS POLICE FORCE RACISM AND ADMONISHES THEM FOR THEIR WHITE POWER HATRED OF AFRICAN AMERICANS.
A biased city is going to decide who and what is biased?
That's like the pot calling the kettle black.
Def: "Biased algorithm": Did not provide the results we wanted.
"a higher-than-normal rejection rate for loans for a group doesn't result in a lower-than-normal default rate on those loans"
If the higher-than-normal rejection rate is correct, it SHOULD lead to a "normal" default rate on loans for that group, not significantly more (too lenient) nor significantly lower (too stringent). Managing risks is the whole point and the risk involved should be at a base level for whatever group you look at.
For those that still don't get it, and say "oh well, the lender should just accept the higher losses for those groups" as the price for Looking Decent in the Eyes of the Public, think again. They're not going to absorb that, it's just coming out of the pockets of their other customers. So they'll increase your rate by 0.5% to offset the "Decency Tax".
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Correlation is not causation. It's hard to prove the theories you automatically believe are causal factors.
Because racism hasnt slacked off other than in the mind of deluded RWNJ.