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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.
"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.
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.
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...
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.
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?