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.

Comments

Re:so when the data presents a "racist" result...

[gurps_npc]

Another racist moron that claims putting one black woman on a committee of 20 white men means that no white people or men are on the committee.

Next you will be thanking God that the US finally got a white male as president, now that we have Trump.

Re:so when the data presents a "racist" result...

[Ichijo]

Or they could stop transferring wealth from poor neighborhoods to wealthy ones. Racist policies create racist results.

You live in Europe or something?

[rsilvergun]

because racism is pretty rampant here in the US still. The best example is when zip codes are used to make decisions. For example, you want to advertise your public Universities to encourage the best students to go to them. So you do a bunch of surveys and find which schools have the best students. Decades of institutional racism means those neighborhoods have higher percentages of white students than minorities. Here "institutional racism" means things like blacks being less likely to get loans, being turned down for jobs and promotions, getting arrested for a gram of weed, etc, etc.

Racism in America didn't go away just because we made it illegal any more than banning drugs did. The difference is there's a good case to be made for legalizing drugs. I can't think of any good reason to legalize racism.