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Not necessarily. If it fired people who listen to rap music while they worked, would it be racist? Some might argue— no— because it also fired white people who
by sagebird 7y ago
Not necessarily. If it fired people who listen to rap music while they worked, would it be racist? Some might argue— no— because it also fired white people who listen to rap. But it would be a rather obvious discriminatory practice. Now we must use our imaginations to consider less direct examples of the same phenomenon. For what it’s worth, I have no reason to believe that amazon is not an equal opportunity human soul extraction and disposal system.
- dx034 7y agoIt fired by the worker's output. Any racial bias in there is likely due to a deeper racial inequality (e.g. differences in health care access which can lead to worse performance) rather than the algorithm itself.
- arkitaip 7y agoAlgos tend to inherit the biases of their developers. Let's say you're a woman on your period and that the bleeding, cramps and pain can get severe. You might need to visit the rest room or maybe take a few more pauses than the modeled average, that happens to be based on men, during certain days. The algorithm that is about to fire you doesn't factor in these issues when it decides to fire you for not meeting its performance quota.
- dx034 7y agoThe example you describe inherits the bias of the sample group, not the developer. A woman comparing individual performance with averages might notice monthly fluctuations rather than a man, but it doesn't mean they'd always recognize it or even look for it.
- visarga 7y agoThe algorithm should have average figures specific to all relevant factors: age, sex, race, nationality, immigration status, not a one-fits all approach. But it's a horrible idea in the first place.
- sagebird 7y agoHahaha, wow -- full circle, this inadvertently arrives back at a racist system it seeks to counteract! For example, if it averages that hispanics are 1.6 times faster than the average worker at sorting boxes, does that mean it should fire a hispanic who is outperforming a white co-worker because adjusting for averages, that individual is 'under-performing'?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 7y agoI get your point, but I’m going to do a “well actually” anyway.... The majority of people who buy rap are White. https://genius.com/discussions/281920-The-majority-of-hip-hop-listeners-are-white https://genius.com/discussions/281920-The-majority-of-hip-ho...
- sagebird 7y agoInteresting as that may be, I'll raise you: discrimination is best measured as a deviation between a selected ratio and a population ratio. If you don't account for that, then silly things happen, like all heat maps turn into population maps, etc.
- hoseja 7y agoHow does that say anything about people who listen to rap, as opposed about people who purchase music?
- scarface74 7y agoPeople are buying music and not listening to it? Right now, the top steaming artist is Drake.
- thefounder 7y agoThe software will track only the work done. Sometimes I would really want to use a computer system rather to deal with people.