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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.
What if the bias happens to NOT be a spurious correlation?
There's no natural law that says that unwanted correlations aren't real. For example, white men really can't jump as well as black ones. Women tend to be better educated. What we need to come to terms with socially is how to accept uncomfortable findings like that without assigning collective blame, to realize that individuals can be exceptions, especially with effort, etc.
The hard part is dealing with things like crime. We want to stop crime so that people aren't hurt and robbed and such. So we police the poor areas more because there's more crime. Unfortunately those areas are more black because more black people are poor. Is that racist? The police are not saints, neither are the suspects, we need things like bodycams to provide a neutral party to prove who is or isn't lying (and to be very skeptical when footage is "lost").
We can't expect populations to be exactly equal, sometimes outliers will be due to chance and we can't expect to hold people accountable for things they do not control.
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 ....