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That's two cases where politicians jumped the gun to make something that isn't decided yet a decisive campaign issue: - Elizabeth Warren Ramps Up Attacks on Ap

That's two cases where politicians jumped the gun to make something that isn't decided yet a decisive campaign issue: - Elizabeth Warren Ramps Up Attacks on Apple Card Bias Claims - The four got public support from presidential front-runners Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who took to Twitter to bash Google for alleged “anti-union” actions. What if this turns out to go out with a whimper? The Apple Card bias was something unrelated to gender that got blown up by someone popular, and these firings were carefully vetted and are legally justified? Will these politicians apologize for jumping the gun? I bet they will point out they were the first when it turns out any other way...

kevingadd 7y ago
The Apple Card bias is a real problem. Who cares whether it's about gender or not? If it's not about gender, the responsibility lies on the bad actor to prove otherwise. The most logical conclusion - based on the events that occurred and the info the general public has - is that it's about gender. They could have defused the controversy almost immediately by identifying the actual cause and fixing it. Part of the reason the story blew up was that DHH and his wife struggled at length to even get an explanation for the problem or find a human who could fix it. The opacity of that whole machine and its resistance to correction is why it became a fuss. I honestly don't care whether it turns out to be about gender, because the end result of that system is that someone got discriminated against in a way that was indistinguishable from being gender discrimination. In the same fashion, if your pricing algorithm accidentally (due to training set bias or whatever) has a 20% higher chance to overcharge people of color, it doesn't really matter how it got that way. It's a racist algorithm and that doesn't mean you're a racist: It just means you have to fix it. Similarly, if the firings were carefully vetted and legally justified, they could have done a better job of explaining that rationale to the public. As a former Google employee the public rationale was obviously deceptive in some fashion, and undermines any suspicion I might have had regarding the employees in question. I worked with plenty of people at that company who probably deserved to be fired, but when the company behaves that way in public and selects people in a way that coincidentally undermines union organizing, I know who I'm going to suspect.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  It is not even close to reasonable to conclude that the Apple Card thing had anything to do with gender. There is no reason to believe that the end result was because of this. Especially given all of the reports of women getting higher limits than their male spouse. This is almost as logical as concluding that vaccines cause autism.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    Why is gender discrimination equivalent to autism and vaccines here? There's lots of standing evidence for gender/race discrimination in finance and zero reliable evidence to support vaccines causing autism. You can come up with a better equivalence than that... People assumed gender discrimination because you had a couple with good credit scores and the woman was discriminated against by the algorithm. The only data we have indicates that it was gender. Of course there could be some other reason, but the obvious conclusion we have based on the information we've got is gender.
    - givinguflac 7y ago
      My wife has a 3x higher limit on her Apple Card and better credit than I. Gender has nothing to do with it, it's just a new hate on Apple train.
    - lawnchair_larry 7y ago
      It’s ridiculous because there is no evidence, just misinformed anecdotes. There is no field for gender on the application. The “equivalent” factors cited (income, credit score) are all irrelevant for credit limit decisions, which are primarily based on previous revolving credit usage. Given that DHH owns basecamp as an LLC, and not a corporation - known as a disregard entity for tax purposes - means he is likely putting all business expenses on revolving credit cards, which would create a massive disparity. That’s just one of many plausible explanations. DHH didn’t even understand that he is not in fact in a community property state - although this wouldn’t have been relevant either. And there are many counter-examples that our confirmation bias doesn’t seem to be interested in: https://mobile.twitter.com/jimcopus/status/1193733746614128640 https://mobile.twitter.com/jimcopus/status/11937337466141286... Furthermore, Goldman issued a public statement confirming that they reviewed the complaints and they are not using gender as a parameter. This would be trivial for an investigator to confirm, so it’s unlikely that they’d be stupid enough to outright lie about it. Jumping to the worst possible conclusion based on a twitter anecdote is not helpful to anybody.

kevingadd 7y ago

The Apple Card bias is a real problem. Who cares whether it's about gender or not? If it's not about gender, the responsibility lies on the bad actor to prove otherwise. The most logical conclusion - based on the events that occurred and the info the general public has - is that it's about gender. They could have defused the controversy almost immediately by identifying the actual cause and fixing it. Part of the reason the story blew up was that DHH and his wife struggled at length to even get an explanation for the problem or find a human who could fix it. The opacity of that whole machine and its resistance to correction is why it became a fuss. I honestly don't care whether it turns out to be about gender, because the end result of that system is that someone got discriminated against in a way that was indistinguishable from being gender discrimination. In the same fashion, if your pricing algorithm accidentally (due to training set bias or whatever) has a 20% higher chance to overcharge people of color, it doesn't really matter how it got that way. It's a racist algorithm and that doesn't mean you're a racist: It just means you have to fix it. Similarly, if the firings were carefully vetted and legally justified, they could have done a better job of explaining that rationale to the public. As a former Google employee the public rationale was obviously deceptive in some fashion, and undermines any suspicion I might have had regarding the employees in question. I worked with plenty of people at that company who probably deserved to be fired, but when the company behaves that way in public and selects people in a way that coincidentally undermines union organizing, I know who I'm going to suspect.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago
It is not even close to reasonable to conclude that the Apple Card thing had anything to do with gender. There is no reason to believe that the end result was because of this. Especially given all of the reports of women getting higher limits than their male spouse. This is almost as logical as concluding that vaccines cause autism.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Why is gender discrimination equivalent to autism and vaccines here? There's lots of standing evidence for gender/race discrimination in finance and zero reliable evidence to support vaccines causing autism. You can come up with a better equivalence than that... People assumed gender discrimination because you had a couple with good credit scores and the woman was discriminated against by the algorithm. The only data we have indicates that it was gender. Of course there could be some other reason, but the obvious conclusion we have based on the information we've got is gender.
  - givinguflac 7y ago
    My wife has a 3x higher limit on her Apple Card and better credit than I. Gender has nothing to do with it, it's just a new hate on Apple train.
  - lawnchair_larry 7y ago
    It’s ridiculous because there is no evidence, just misinformed anecdotes. There is no field for gender on the application. The “equivalent” factors cited (income, credit score) are all irrelevant for credit limit decisions, which are primarily based on previous revolving credit usage. Given that DHH owns basecamp as an LLC, and not a corporation - known as a disregard entity for tax purposes - means he is likely putting all business expenses on revolving credit cards, which would create a massive disparity. That’s just one of many plausible explanations. DHH didn’t even understand that he is not in fact in a community property state - although this wouldn’t have been relevant either. And there are many counter-examples that our confirmation bias doesn’t seem to be interested in: https://mobile.twitter.com/jimcopus/status/1193733746614128640 https://mobile.twitter.com/jimcopus/status/11937337466141286... Furthermore, Goldman issued a public statement confirming that they reviewed the complaints and they are not using gender as a parameter. This would be trivial for an investigator to confirm, so it’s unlikely that they’d be stupid enough to outright lie about it. Jumping to the worst possible conclusion based on a twitter anecdote is not helpful to anybody.