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Are sure this is based on gender? Or just something that correlates to gender really closely? Maybe the woman these tweets are from just use Uber more and so t
by swsieber 9y ago
Are sure this is based on gender? Or just something that correlates to gender really closely?
Maybe the woman these tweets are from just use Uber more and so there also predicts they'd be willing to pay more. Or something like that.
Otoh, I wouldn't put it past Uber, but we only have a couple of data points here but even if we had a ton more, *my above hypothesis and actually discriminating by gender might be very hard to tell apart.
- captainmuon 9y agoI'm pretty sure the code doesn't say if gender == 'f': price *= 1.3 But it is concievable that an algorithm found a cluster of people who are willing to pay more at a certain time, for certain routes. After all, that is what their rate finding algorithm does. That's what I'd make it do to maximize profit. It just happens to be that the result is that some women (on average, or in some select cases, I don't know) are asked to pay a lot more at night. If it is based explicitly on gender, that would be really dumb, and I don't think even Uber is that evil. But if it is based on a close correlate, the effect is entirely similar. We as a society need to think about if we want that, or if we want to add the constraint to such algorithms that men and women pay the same. Is it OK that... ... people pay more at rush hour than at other times? ... people pay more in unpleasant weather? ... women pay more than men? ... people of different race pay differently? ... people of different income pay differently? ... potentially sick people pay more on the way to the doctor? These are all things we have to consider. What do we leave to the market and algorithms to decide, and what do we constrain? Some cases are IMO absolutely clear cut, some we'll have to debate.