4 ms·
These systems are interested in probabilities, not in finding the causes of shoplifting. If not correlation, then what else?
by doublekill 7y ago
These systems are interested in probabilities, not in finding the causes of shoplifting. If not correlation, then what else?
- kartikkumar 7y agoHow is a validated chain of causation not important for these systems to arrive at ethical predictions? The causation gap for these models presents a really terrible scenario. Without causation, these models are capable of correlating things like race, gender, etc. with outcomes like shoplifting.
- doublekill 7y agoBecause it is not a social science paper or a government policy (smoking causes cancer, so we should forbid advertising smoking to teenagers). You do not combat shoplifting by knowing the causes of shoplifting (being unethical causes shoplifting, now what?). Nobody infringes on your rights, if a system pings you as suspicious and so a security guard is alerted and watches you more closely. There are no false positive consequences here: either they find that can of Red Bull on your person without a paid receipt, or they don't. You won't get banned from the store, because the system inadvertently deemed you suspicious. A whitebox statistical model still can provide the factors that contributed to its prediction, without resorting to causal inference. I do not think a certain race, gender, age, income causes shoplifting, but they sure are correlated, and effective at finding shoplifters or tax fraudsters. I deem the act of shoplifting more unethical than the act of watching you on a camera feed. This already happens anyway, these systems just manage attention better.