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I’ll tell you more: _human judgment_ contains bias. You can’t possibly think logically about every single judgment, particularly when information is incomplete,

I’ll tell you more: _human judgment_ contains bias. You can’t possibly think logically about every single judgment, particularly when information is incomplete, which it is in the overwhelming majority of cases. It is not a given, to me, that on average AI does any worse than the human population outside the “woke” segment. Or even _within_ that segment considered in isolation.

jimmytidey 8y ago
If you put a human in charge of a judgement call, mostly there are mechanisms to monitor them, a requirement that they give reasons for their decisions, and mechanisms to appeal those judgements. We aren't used to having to do that with decisions made by computers. It's not that AI makes better or worse decisions, it's the way we treat those decisions.
- throwaway84742 8y ago
  Same as with AI, it is not economical to monitor human decisions, so mostly it doesn’t actually happen. See eg Youtube demonetization as a particularly illustrative example.
- iguy 8y ago
  "a requirement that they give reasons for their decisions" But this is mostly a sham. People lie about their reasons for doing things, even to themselves. Especially when they know what reasons are publicly acceptable. Maybe the major difference is that it's much easier to run experiments on computers. I mean people try this on humans but it's very hard to do realistically: most of those studies where you submit 1000 CVs with varying details are garbage, because they can only access an unrealistic part of the process (I mean who ever got a job without networking? etc). Whereas on almost any computer system you feed it completely realistic fake data.
jccalhoun 8y ago
I think the problem is that a lot of people think something like, "It is an algorithm not a person so it must be totally scientific and unbiased" when that isn't the case. The non-techy public needs to be aware that these things are made by humans who may be recreating their bias in the technology.

jimmytidey 8y ago

If you put a human in charge of a judgement call, mostly there are mechanisms to monitor them, a requirement that they give reasons for their decisions, and mechanisms to appeal those judgements. We aren't used to having to do that with decisions made by computers. It's not that AI makes better or worse decisions, it's the way we treat those decisions.

throwaway84742 8y ago
Same as with AI, it is not economical to monitor human decisions, so mostly it doesn’t actually happen. See eg Youtube demonetization as a particularly illustrative example.
iguy 8y ago
"a requirement that they give reasons for their decisions" But this is mostly a sham. People lie about their reasons for doing things, even to themselves. Especially when they know what reasons are publicly acceptable. Maybe the major difference is that it's much easier to run experiments on computers. I mean people try this on humans but it's very hard to do realistically: most of those studies where you submit 1000 CVs with varying details are garbage, because they can only access an unrealistic part of the process (I mean who ever got a job without networking? etc). Whereas on almost any computer system you feed it completely realistic fake data.

jccalhoun 8y ago

I think the problem is that a lot of people think something like, "It is an algorithm not a person so it must be totally scientific and unbiased" when that isn't the case. The non-techy public needs to be aware that these things are made by humans who may be recreating their bias in the technology.