4 ms·

We already discriminate as of today based on gender statistics in areas such as car insurance, where men pay more on average, because they're statistically more

We already discriminate as of today based on gender statistics in areas such as car insurance, where men pay more on average, because they're statistically more likely to cause accidents and drive recklessly. Why can't statistics be extended to other areas?

chronic829 7y ago
Also, men dominate the trucking and construction industry. Why are we not pushing for gender equality there? Hint: the answer is money.
mantap 7y ago
In the EU exactly that kind of gender discrimination is illegal. Insurers are not allowed to charge men more than women, just for being men. The question is, do you want to live in a society where prices are set based on one's genes. I sure don't.
- briandear 7y ago
  So what the EU does is just charge more for everyone which means women pay higher rates for car insurance despite having lower accident rates. So in the goal of equality, women are being forced to pay more than they should based on their level of risk. That’s exactly the opposite of discrimination — women pay more despite lower risk, which makes that EU law, discriminatory.
- missosoup 7y ago
  In the age of ML this is almost impossible to police and very difficult to implement even if you want to. You blind your model to gender but it learns to infer it from names. You blind it to names, it learns to infer it from other inputs. By the time you've blinded your model to anything that gives away gender, it no longer has utility. If you instead intentionally alter the model to still have utility but impact both genders equally, it's no longer procedurally fair and does in fact discriminate. This is the trilemma mentioned above. You must choose which of those factors you care about and which one you'll sacrifice. If you're unable to make that choice and morally stand behind it, then probably you shouldn't be building said model/system in the first place. This is one of the major topics of the ML ethics conversation.
- ahbyb 7y ago
  >The question is, do you want to live in a society where prices are set based on one's genes. I sure don't. Those genes do clearly make us behave in different ways, so why not? I'm not a feminist, but it would be fairer for women to pay less for the same insurance since they are less likely to get in trouble with their cars. Why should they pay more?
  - solotronics 7y ago
    I think the argument reduces to since we can get hyper accurate data on an individual level how can we treat people fairly? If an insurance algorithm charges one person who is higher risk 100x more than someone else is it really a fair form of insurance?
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 7y ago
  I think that's an interesting point, and I can't say I have a well thought out position on it, but I'm happy to have stumbled upon this conversation. One one hand, I feel ok paying extra for my health care to cover others who might have been left out previously because of individual pre-existing conditions. Us pooling all together to take care of every citizen makes sense. However in a purely hypothetical scenario where say men are 1000x worse at something than women, let's say driving, say car insurance for women is $100 and it's $100k for men, should we really charge women 50k just to make it fair based on the "we must ignore gender" principle? I realize in the real world there might be no such stark contrast between genders or ethnicities, in which case giving everybody the same higher rate would probably be more sensible.
cycrutchfield 7y ago
Do you really think that the melanin content of your skin has any causal relation to how likely you are to commit a crime, or any other outcome?
- pnako 7y ago
  Literally no one is treating race as if it was about "melanin content of [one's] skin", so that's a strawman if I ever saw one. It's a very visible trait, strongly associated with ancestry, and thus associated with many other, more important, traits.
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    Well, police don’t perform actions based on the identity of your parents or grandparents. Skin color is evidently a pretty important feature in terms of determining the actions that police may take. But, let’s follow your logic for a second. It seems you are suggesting that it is acceptable for insurance companies to ask you for the identity of your parents or grandparents to decide what rates to charge you. Does that sound like an outcome that you think would be acceptable?
    - pnako 7y ago
      Not necessarily (I haven't thought about the issue too much). My point is more that, if insurance companies discriminate using any non-genetic, non-biological criterion, the outcome would still not be a distribution strictly representative of the population. Because people's choices are influenced by their background. For example, it's quite probable that the distribution of brand and type of car is not uniform across racial lines (or between men and women). Would you consider the outcome resulting from this to be biased? In fact I'm pretty sure it's how European insurance companies still manage to charge more for men, despite being forbidden to explicitly ask that information. That information still affects the pricing model through things like occupation, etc.
- plurple 7y ago
  Do you really think the melanin content of your skin has any causal relation to how well you can play basketball? Or maybe melanin content isn’t the only difference.
astura 7y ago
Well, not everywhere allows discrimination based on sex, some US states don't, for example (California just joined that club last year). Plus the EU doesn't either. People generally find a discrimination "fair" if it's based on something that you can change whereas an "unfair" discrimination is typically something that you are.

chronic829 7y ago

Also, men dominate the trucking and construction industry. Why are we not pushing for gender equality there? Hint: the answer is money.

mantap 7y ago

In the EU exactly that kind of gender discrimination is illegal. Insurers are not allowed to charge men more than women, just for being men. The question is, do you want to live in a society where prices are set based on one's genes. I sure don't.

briandear 7y ago
So what the EU does is just charge more for everyone which means women pay higher rates for car insurance despite having lower accident rates. So in the goal of equality, women are being forced to pay more than they should based on their level of risk. That’s exactly the opposite of discrimination — women pay more despite lower risk, which makes that EU law, discriminatory.
missosoup 7y ago
In the age of ML this is almost impossible to police and very difficult to implement even if you want to. You blind your model to gender but it learns to infer it from names. You blind it to names, it learns to infer it from other inputs. By the time you've blinded your model to anything that gives away gender, it no longer has utility. If you instead intentionally alter the model to still have utility but impact both genders equally, it's no longer procedurally fair and does in fact discriminate. This is the trilemma mentioned above. You must choose which of those factors you care about and which one you'll sacrifice. If you're unable to make that choice and morally stand behind it, then probably you shouldn't be building said model/system in the first place. This is one of the major topics of the ML ethics conversation.
ahbyb 7y ago
>The question is, do you want to live in a society where prices are set based on one's genes. I sure don't. Those genes do clearly make us behave in different ways, so why not? I'm not a feminist, but it would be fairer for women to pay less for the same insurance since they are less likely to get in trouble with their cars. Why should they pay more?
- solotronics 7y ago
  I think the argument reduces to since we can get hyper accurate data on an individual level how can we treat people fairly? If an insurance algorithm charges one person who is higher risk 100x more than someone else is it really a fair form of insurance?
8f2ab37a-ed6c 7y ago
I think that's an interesting point, and I can't say I have a well thought out position on it, but I'm happy to have stumbled upon this conversation. One one hand, I feel ok paying extra for my health care to cover others who might have been left out previously because of individual pre-existing conditions. Us pooling all together to take care of every citizen makes sense. However in a purely hypothetical scenario where say men are 1000x worse at something than women, let's say driving, say car insurance for women is $100 and it's $100k for men, should we really charge women 50k just to make it fair based on the "we must ignore gender" principle? I realize in the real world there might be no such stark contrast between genders or ethnicities, in which case giving everybody the same higher rate would probably be more sensible.

cycrutchfield 7y ago

Do you really think that the melanin content of your skin has any causal relation to how likely you are to commit a crime, or any other outcome?

pnako 7y ago
Literally no one is treating race as if it was about "melanin content of [one's] skin", so that's a strawman if I ever saw one. It's a very visible trait, strongly associated with ancestry, and thus associated with many other, more important, traits.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  Well, police don’t perform actions based on the identity of your parents or grandparents. Skin color is evidently a pretty important feature in terms of determining the actions that police may take. But, let’s follow your logic for a second. It seems you are suggesting that it is acceptable for insurance companies to ask you for the identity of your parents or grandparents to decide what rates to charge you. Does that sound like an outcome that you think would be acceptable?
  - pnako 7y ago
    Not necessarily (I haven't thought about the issue too much). My point is more that, if insurance companies discriminate using any non-genetic, non-biological criterion, the outcome would still not be a distribution strictly representative of the population. Because people's choices are influenced by their background. For example, it's quite probable that the distribution of brand and type of car is not uniform across racial lines (or between men and women). Would you consider the outcome resulting from this to be biased? In fact I'm pretty sure it's how European insurance companies still manage to charge more for men, despite being forbidden to explicitly ask that information. That information still affects the pricing model through things like occupation, etc.
plurple 7y ago
Do you really think the melanin content of your skin has any causal relation to how well you can play basketball? Or maybe melanin content isn’t the only difference.

astura 7y ago

Well, not everywhere allows discrimination based on sex, some US states don't, for example (California just joined that club last year). Plus the EU doesn't either. People generally find a discrimination "fair" if it's based on something that you can change whereas an "unfair" discrimination is typically something that you are.