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I just missed the deadline to edit my post, so I am replying to myself. Looking at the parent comment again, I seemed to have just restated it without adding a
by tareqak 7y ago
I just missed the deadline to edit my post, so I am replying to myself.
Looking at the parent comment again, I seemed to have just restated it without adding anything new of my own. I meant to add that my reasoning for why Amazon pulled development of this tool was not just because the tool’s bias, but also because that the existence of the tool and its associated training data could open up Amazon to litigation claiming that their hiring decisions were biased against women in ten year span referred to by the article.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoIt's interesting that nobody even bothered to check whether the bias was illicit. They found something that sounds bad and the immediate response is "OMG bad PR, pull emergency shutdown." They just assume that "women's" is coding for female candidates and not something more specific, like gender-segregated activities that may legitimately produce lower quality candidates than the equivalent integrated activities that exposed the student/candidate to a more diverse cohort population. Probably also doesn't help that some of the biggest gender-segregated institutions are penal in nature, i.e. "reform school for troubled girls" or "women's correctional facility." Did anybody even check whether it also penalizes words like "boys" and "gentlemen's"?
- tareqak 7y agoTo be fair, it would probably take more time and money irrespective of litigation to be sure that there was illicit bias than to just delete everything and call the exercise a failure.