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I've only had a chance to skim this, so maybe I misunderstood. That being said, the authors' point seems to be right there in the introduction - "it's not fair

I've only had a chance to skim this, so maybe I misunderstood. That being said, the authors' point seems to be right there in the introduction - "it's not fair to hold all individuals to the same standard, irrespective of race." In other words, the broader community should tolerate laxer pre-trial sentencing standards applied to people of race A, precisely because they commit more crime than people of race B? Pretty odd concept of "fairness" if you ask me. Also interesting that explicitly adjusting for race does not affect recidivism predictions by the COMPAS model. In other words, as it stands, the model is not inadvertently discriminating on the basis of race. I wonder if the same testing has been applied to sentencing decisions.

goialoq 9y ago
> the broader community should tolerate laxer pre-trial sentencing standards applied to people of race A, precisely because they commit more crime than people of race B Does "they" they mean "each individual of Race A", or the subpopulation of "Race A"? Those are two very different meanings, and the heart of the problem. Why should I be jailed because other people with similar skin color to me committed crimes? Should we go digging to find whether Irish or Russian caucasians have higher than average crime rates, and then refuse bail to all Irish or Russian-descendant defendants?
- avinium 9y ago
  I don't quite understand your point. Race is explicitly not a factor in individual pre-trial detention decisions. People are being placed in pre-trial detention because they're flight risks, as determined* by their marital status, whether or not they're unemployed, accused of a violent crime, with criminal records, etc. As it turns out, people from race A overwhelmingly meet these criteria, leading to outcomes that the authors believe are unfair. In fact, the authors are suggesting that race should be explicitly considered in these decisions, in order to balance intra-racial representations. Given two people accused of the same crime, with the same job, marital and criminal history, the authors would detain one and release another, purely on the basis that one is white and one is black. As I said, I don't think many people would agree with that definition of "fair." * I don't know exactly what the model inputs are, I just made these up for demonstration purposes.
  - joe_the_user 9y ago
    Your posts misunderstand both the article and the idea of fairness. Also from the abstract: "In some cases, black defendants are substantially more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly classified as high risk." The point is that an AI is a black box that may not explicitly use race but since it's using a variety of criteria rather opaquely, it may effectively, indirectly, use race, the neighborhood someone lives in, their social status or all sorts of things that aren't fair based on "your personal circumstances should determine whether you are considered a risk". The authors propose a system to mitigate the problems here, though I actually don't really think that's the solution - these AIs should simply be abolished and replaced by objective criteria.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      How do you figure out if criteria are unbiased without actually implementing an unbiased estimator though? (Not an AI. A statistical Bayesian-like where we can reason on inputs and outputs.)
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      >Also from the abstract: "In some cases, black defendants are substantially more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly classified as high risk." But that's not really true: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.... >these AIs should simply be abolished and replaced by objective criteria. What exactly is "objective criteria"? Previously human judges made these decisions. They are far more biased than any statistical algorithm.
    - TruthBeDum123 9y ago
      OF course they are substantially more likely to be incorrectly classified. They are in a group with far more risk. (this is simple statistics and probability) Interestingly, if this Algorithm was a human, they would be called a racist by all on the left. Instead, the best than can be managed is "unfair". Objective truth hurts sometimes. Perhaps some apologies are owed to the so-called racists out there. Turns out they were just being as honest as a probability algorithm (shame on them). If AI an robots ever police our society, leftists will have to tamper with their highly accurate, objective statistical analysis of who to pull over for questioning to save them from their racism. That is already what is going to happen to this algorithm. Machines exposing emotion initiated dishonesty (until they are beaten into social justice submission and artificial guilt subroutines added to make things "fair").
laichzeit0 9y ago
> In other words, the broader community should tolerate laxer pre-trial sentencing standards applied to people of race A, precisely because they commit more crime than people of race B? Define "race".
- avinium 9y ago
  > Define "race". Well, if you don't take the authors' approach, you don't need to. You just continue assessing pre-trial detention on the basis of each individual's background.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  https://i.imgur.com/cxLFux5.png https://i.imgur.com/cxLFux5.png
wonnage 9y ago
re: COMPAS > As noted above, a major criticism of COMPAS is that the rate of false positives is higher among blacks than whites [2]. Policing in America is racist. So anything that takes arrests into account (prior arrests, recidivism, etc.) will be in error as well. The line you quoted misses a lot of context - the 'standard' is an algorithmic risk score with a single threshold. The paper mentions why having different treatment by race might have legal problems (e.g 14th amendment). So this standard is what we're stuck with. The paper asserts that it isn't fair.
- scythe 9y ago
  >Policing in America is racist. So anything that takes arrests into account (prior arrests, recidivism, etc.) will be in error as well. This is really the clincher. If the algorithm is effectively aggregating multiple human decisions, it ought to correct for known biases in those decisions.
  - taneq 9y ago
    Shouldn't you just... correct the decisions?
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  > Policing in America is racist. Citation needed. The fact that certain ethnic groups have problems with crime and violence can be attributed to the fact they grew up in single parent households, are less educated, and have less income than other ethnic groups, all things that contribute to a higher crime rate. > The paper mentions why having different treatment by race might have legal problems (e.g 14th amendment). I don't see how anti-slavery has anything to do with this. If you are convicted of breaking the law, as a citizen you will be subject to the same punishments as any other citizen.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  >Policing in America is racist. Citation needed. Cops visit black neighborhoods more, sure. But they do that because they commit vastly more crime. Which is the cause and which the effect? It's also a lot more complicated than that. People throw out studies that blacks are more likely to be caught for drug crimes. But they are less likely to be caught for more serious crimes. Possibly because they trust police less and are less likely to volunteer as witnesses. E.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-america-1422049080 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-amer...

goialoq 9y ago

> the broader community should tolerate laxer pre-trial sentencing standards applied to people of race A, precisely because they commit more crime than people of race B Does "they" they mean "each individual of Race A", or the subpopulation of "Race A"? Those are two very different meanings, and the heart of the problem. Why should I be jailed because other people with similar skin color to me committed crimes? Should we go digging to find whether Irish or Russian caucasians have higher than average crime rates, and then refuse bail to all Irish or Russian-descendant defendants?

avinium 9y ago
I don't quite understand your point. Race is explicitly not a factor in individual pre-trial detention decisions. People are being placed in pre-trial detention because they're flight risks, as determined* by their marital status, whether or not they're unemployed, accused of a violent crime, with criminal records, etc. As it turns out, people from race A overwhelmingly meet these criteria, leading to outcomes that the authors believe are unfair. In fact, the authors are suggesting that race should be explicitly considered in these decisions, in order to balance intra-racial representations. Given two people accused of the same crime, with the same job, marital and criminal history, the authors would detain one and release another, purely on the basis that one is white and one is black. As I said, I don't think many people would agree with that definition of "fair." * I don't know exactly what the model inputs are, I just made these up for demonstration purposes.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  Your posts misunderstand both the article and the idea of fairness. Also from the abstract: "In some cases, black defendants are substantially more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly classified as high risk." The point is that an AI is a black box that may not explicitly use race but since it's using a variety of criteria rather opaquely, it may effectively, indirectly, use race, the neighborhood someone lives in, their social status or all sorts of things that aren't fair based on "your personal circumstances should determine whether you are considered a risk". The authors propose a system to mitigate the problems here, though I actually don't really think that's the solution - these AIs should simply be abolished and replaced by objective criteria.
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    How do you figure out if criteria are unbiased without actually implementing an unbiased estimator though? (Not an AI. A statistical Bayesian-like where we can reason on inputs and outputs.)
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    >Also from the abstract: "In some cases, black defendants are substantially more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly classified as high risk." But that's not really true: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.... >these AIs should simply be abolished and replaced by objective criteria. What exactly is "objective criteria"? Previously human judges made these decisions. They are far more biased than any statistical algorithm.
  - TruthBeDum123 9y ago
    OF course they are substantially more likely to be incorrectly classified. They are in a group with far more risk. (this is simple statistics and probability) Interestingly, if this Algorithm was a human, they would be called a racist by all on the left. Instead, the best than can be managed is "unfair". Objective truth hurts sometimes. Perhaps some apologies are owed to the so-called racists out there. Turns out they were just being as honest as a probability algorithm (shame on them). If AI an robots ever police our society, leftists will have to tamper with their highly accurate, objective statistical analysis of who to pull over for questioning to save them from their racism. That is already what is going to happen to this algorithm. Machines exposing emotion initiated dishonesty (until they are beaten into social justice submission and artificial guilt subroutines added to make things "fair").

laichzeit0 9y ago

> In other words, the broader community should tolerate laxer pre-trial sentencing standards applied to people of race A, precisely because they commit more crime than people of race B? Define "race".

avinium 9y ago
> Define "race". Well, if you don't take the authors' approach, you don't need to. You just continue assessing pre-trial detention on the basis of each individual's background.
Houshalter 9y ago
https://i.imgur.com/cxLFux5.png https://i.imgur.com/cxLFux5.png

wonnage 9y ago

re: COMPAS > As noted above, a major criticism of COMPAS is that the rate of false positives is higher among blacks than whites [2]. Policing in America is racist. So anything that takes arrests into account (prior arrests, recidivism, etc.) will be in error as well. The line you quoted misses a lot of context - the 'standard' is an algorithmic risk score with a single threshold. The paper mentions why having different treatment by race might have legal problems (e.g 14th amendment). So this standard is what we're stuck with. The paper asserts that it isn't fair.

scythe 9y ago
>Policing in America is racist. So anything that takes arrests into account (prior arrests, recidivism, etc.) will be in error as well. This is really the clincher. If the algorithm is effectively aggregating multiple human decisions, it ought to correct for known biases in those decisions.
- taneq 9y ago
  Shouldn't you just... correct the decisions?
jimmywanger 9y ago
> Policing in America is racist. Citation needed. The fact that certain ethnic groups have problems with crime and violence can be attributed to the fact they grew up in single parent households, are less educated, and have less income than other ethnic groups, all things that contribute to a higher crime rate. > The paper mentions why having different treatment by race might have legal problems (e.g 14th amendment). I don't see how anti-slavery has anything to do with this. If you are convicted of breaking the law, as a citizen you will be subject to the same punishments as any other citizen.
Houshalter 9y ago
>Policing in America is racist. Citation needed. Cops visit black neighborhoods more, sure. But they do that because they commit vastly more crime. Which is the cause and which the effect? It's also a lot more complicated than that. People throw out studies that blacks are more likely to be caught for drug crimes. But they are less likely to be caught for more serious crimes. Possibly because they trust police less and are less likely to volunteer as witnesses. E.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-america-1422049080 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-underpolicing-of-black-amer...