A New Bill Would Force Companies To Check Their Algorithms For Bias (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: U.S. lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require large companies to audit machine learning-powered systems -- like facial recognition or ad targeting algorithms -- for bias. The Algorithmic Accountability Act is sponsored by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), with a House equivalent sponsored by Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY). If passed, it would ask the Federal Trade Commission to create rules for evaluating "highly sensitive" automated systems. Companies would have to assess whether the algorithms powering these tools are biased or discriminatory, as well as whether they pose a privacy or security risk to consumers.

The Algorithmic Accountability Act is aimed at major companies with access to large amounts of information. It would apply to companies that make over $50 million per year, hold information on at least 1 million people or devices, or primarily act as data brokers that buy and sell consumer data. These companies would have to evaluate a broad range of algorithms -- including anything that affects consumers' legal rights, attempts to predict and analyze their behavior, involves large amounts of sensitive data, or "systematically monitors a large, publicly accessible physical place." That would theoretically cover a huge swath of the tech economy, and if a report turns up major risks of discrimination, privacy problems, or other issues, the company is supposed to address them within a timely manner.

Comments

Re:What is bias?

[Immerman]

Unfortunately when trying to eliminate multi-generational problems, "just letting it play out" is unlikely to fix things.

Someone born into poverty, with parents who never went to college or pursued "white-collar" jobs is very unlikely to get instilled with a the strong foundation of cultural behaviors conductive to getting into college and pursuing such careers when they grow up. They're also very unlikely to have the social connections that would give them an advantage in getting in to college and finding a good career. (for example "legacy admissions" give a strong college admissions bias in favor of children of alumni - which is to say primarily a subset of white kids, because that has historically been the majority of students)

Now that's strictly economic discrimination, nothing to do with race directly. But economic discrimination is endemic in our society, with little sign that anyone in power has any interest in eliminating it - so it's the inescapable backdrop of everything else. And generations of racism mean that obvious minorities mostly start out far lower on the economic ladder than white people.

Which means that, even if we could wave a magic wand and completely eliminate racism today, minorities would remain mostly confined to the lower classes for many, many generations to come, simply because they were already concentrated there and our society offers very limited economic mobility. Add in the additional burden of even mild racism, reinforced by the fact that race is a very obvious indicator of probable economic background that's impossible to hide, and you've got a society infected with an enduring systematic racial bias.

A redneck from the deep south who was lucky enough to get out can lose his accent, put on a suit, and pass himself off as someone who "belongs" on an upper-class career path, and no one will guess that his parents were heroin addicts that sent him to bed hungry most nights. A black man has no such option - even if he was born upper class the assumption that he's poor trash trying to hide in a suit will follow him all his life.

To realistically eliminate that bias you must actively "mix up" the population, so that race is no longer an effective predictor of economic status. Which, short of playing "swap a life" at random, seemingly means that you need to give minorities an unfair advantage so that they can climb out of poverty more easily.

Or, we could do something really radical. We could enhance social mobility for everyone. Make sure *any* poor kid has an "unfair" advantage to offset the obviously unfair disadvantage of being poor. Make that powerful enough, and we could mix up society reasonably well within only a few generations. Assuming of course we kept waving that magic wand.

Of course that still means that white people would have a net-downward economic mobility - can't have the minority poor climbing out of poverty without someone else sliding down to taking their place. Not without changing our economic system far more fundamentally. But at least the newly poor would have no more difficulty getting back out again than the minorities did, and know that their poverty is due to their own bad luck and failure rather than minorities getting an unfair advantage. That's how that works, right...?