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Nothing on the planet can do the job of a judge perfectly. There will always be edge cases and vague situations. Human judges are sometimes unfair and inaccur

by panic 10y ago

Nothing on the planet can do the job of a judge perfectly. There will always be edge cases and vague situations. Human judges are sometimes unfair and inaccurate, but we can listen to their reasoning, criticize it, continue the discussion by appealing their decision, and so on. How do you criticize the reasoning of a statistical algorithm?

vintermann 10y ago
You can't listen to their reasoning. You can listen to their justifications, which aren't the same thing at all. The attraction of an algorithm is that you can control strictly what information goes in, and what objective is targeted. A judge may - consciously or not - use the information of the accused's skin color. A judge may - again consciously or not - target objectives besides lowering recidivism. An algorithm isn't always better, but when it produces unwanted results, we can criticize it, think about why it went wrong, improve it. When a judge makes mistakes, there's not any easy way to improve him. I think artificial objectivity is "bigger" than artificial intelligence. It's not that ML algorithms are so much better than human brains at what they do - it's that we can have more confidence about how it does it. Oddly enough, considering how they're often criticized for opacity.
- mk89 10y ago
  > An algorithm isn't always better, but when it produces unwanted results, we can criticize it, think about why it went wrong, improve it. When a judge makes mistakes, there's not any easy way to improve him. I believe that now that there is much fuzz about AI you can improve lots of things. I would like to see in 200 years if you can - no, you can't, why? For the same reason you hardly can change things now: "the algorithm has been studied, improved, tested over and over" -> this is the law. But who says it's correct or fair? A judge, exactly because he is a human, can improve. How? For example, with a feedback system or by requiring explanations for his judgement (based on facts, not moods) - if he doesn't do so, he shall be accountable for his actions. I am not too much into law or politics, but things are that way since always and hardly have changed. But we know how things will go. Algorithms/machines will slowly replace everything, because they lower the costs with the promise that things will be more dynamic and that life will improve - however, the usual gang of people will manage to be "more equal" than others, also when the algorithm works perfectly. > The attraction of an algorithm is that you can control strictly what information goes in [...] How is this attractive? Information can be easily manipulated, delayed, withheld. Essentially, you are just shifting the accountability - from the judge to the guy who feeds the algorithm. And by the way, we are talking about judges who don't apply the law appropriately. Let's talk about those judges who applying the law put their lives at risk - or simply get killed. Shall we? Can we at least trust those judges?
Houshalter 10y ago
The question is predicting recidivism. Whether someone will commit a crime again after being released. If they are a danger to society. And grouping people into low risk or high risk categories, so people spend less time in prison, but really dangerous criminals are watched. If human judges do better at this task, it's very easy to test it. We ask them to predict what criminals are low risk or high risk. And they barely do better than chance, and are easily beaten by the simplest statistical baseline. Yes algorithms have edge cases, but humans have far more.

by panic 10y ago

vintermann 10y ago

You can't listen to their reasoning. You can listen to their justifications, which aren't the same thing at all. The attraction of an algorithm is that you can control strictly what information goes in, and what objective is targeted. A judge may - consciously or not - use the information of the accused's skin color. A judge may - again consciously or not - target objectives besides lowering recidivism. An algorithm isn't always better, but when it produces unwanted results, we can criticize it, think about why it went wrong, improve it. When a judge makes mistakes, there's not any easy way to improve him. I think artificial objectivity is "bigger" than artificial intelligence. It's not that ML algorithms are so much better than human brains at what they do - it's that we can have more confidence about how it does it. Oddly enough, considering how they're often criticized for opacity.

mk89 10y ago
> An algorithm isn't always better, but when it produces unwanted results, we can criticize it, think about why it went wrong, improve it. When a judge makes mistakes, there's not any easy way to improve him. I believe that now that there is much fuzz about AI you can improve lots of things. I would like to see in 200 years if you can - no, you can't, why? For the same reason you hardly can change things now: "the algorithm has been studied, improved, tested over and over" -> this is the law. But who says it's correct or fair? A judge, exactly because he is a human, can improve. How? For example, with a feedback system or by requiring explanations for his judgement (based on facts, not moods) - if he doesn't do so, he shall be accountable for his actions. I am not too much into law or politics, but things are that way since always and hardly have changed. But we know how things will go. Algorithms/machines will slowly replace everything, because they lower the costs with the promise that things will be more dynamic and that life will improve - however, the usual gang of people will manage to be "more equal" than others, also when the algorithm works perfectly. > The attraction of an algorithm is that you can control strictly what information goes in [...] How is this attractive? Information can be easily manipulated, delayed, withheld. Essentially, you are just shifting the accountability - from the judge to the guy who feeds the algorithm. And by the way, we are talking about judges who don't apply the law appropriately. Let's talk about those judges who applying the law put their lives at risk - or simply get killed. Shall we? Can we at least trust those judges?

Houshalter 10y ago

The question is predicting recidivism. Whether someone will commit a crime again after being released. If they are a danger to society. And grouping people into low risk or high risk categories, so people spend less time in prison, but really dangerous criminals are watched. If human judges do better at this task, it's very easy to test it. We ask them to predict what criminals are low risk or high risk. And they barely do better than chance, and are easily beaten by the simplest statistical baseline. Yes algorithms have edge cases, but humans have far more.