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>But that's still a huge step forward from having people, even smart people, make gut decisions just based on what's in their head, even if that's still a decis
by zardo 10y ago
>But that's still a huge step forward from having people, even smart people, make gut decisions just based on what's in their head, even if that's still a decision driven by human values and biases.
I don't see how that follows. The biases of an algorithm or beurocracy aren't inherently superior, they are just inherently repeatable.
- scarmig 10y agoBeing repeatable is valuable in itself: it makes the procedure testable and inherently more transparent. Yes, someone could come up with a hiring decision procedure that has as its first step "first, immediately reject all women and nonwhites." But that'd be subject to auditing and discovery in a way that a single grumpy old man finding arbitrary reasons to reject all women and nonwhites is not. You can iterate and improve on designed systems; you can't iterate and improve on human fallibility.
- zardo 10y agoThere's a basic assumption you have to make, anything we don't know how to quantify isn't worth considering. That's how we got standardized testing. We get fairness by treating everyone equally, without compassion, without empathy.