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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?
...Affirmative Algorithms.
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.
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.
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?