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I think most people are misunderstanding the likely root cause. > An algorithm was used to assign its first allotment of the vaccine. The algorithm prioritized
by fairity 6y ago
I think most people are misunderstanding the likely root cause.
> An algorithm was used to assign its first allotment of the vaccine. The algorithm prioritized health care workers at highest risk for COVID infections, along with factors like age and the location or unit where they work in the hospital. Residents did not have an assigned location, and along with their typically young age, they were dropped low on the priority list.
Whoever coded up the algorithm for personal COVID-risk probably forgot to take care of null-states for the location input. Residents had their location set to null, and were therefore prioritized lower than they should've been.
It's possible that the admins purposefully created this null-state bug so as to have a reasonable fallback story in the case they got caught, but per Occam's Razor, I think it's much more likely it was a dumb, honest mistake.
- jrochkind1 6y agoI don't think I was assuming anything in particular about the intents. it's a rather important thing not to check on actual data, including residents in the sample, isn't it? they just never bothered to test the algorithm, didn't even review the results it spit out, before delivering the results as a plan? (it is quite possible indeed they didn't, I'm not saying that is a coverup for some other motive, I'm saying that is incompetent). What was the QA process like? Who was involved in it? From the article, apparently not any department heads or medical staff in general. That's not a competent design process for something so important, is it? That they never bothered to see how "the algorithm" treated residents demonstrates that they didn't give a shit about residents, not necessarily that they were intentionally screwing them. The administration doesn't say much about how the algorithm was designed, they just say "oh, it was an algorithm." I think many people believe that "algorithms are objective" and they are trying to play that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoYou may be misunderstanding what this is a plan for. All Stanford medical staff are expected to be vaccinated over the coming weeks; the allocation in question is for deciding who's getting vaccinated today, with the first available shipment. It does seem like this particular error could have been caught easily, but conducting a thorough, laborious review process rather than getting shots in arms ASAP would have been an even worse decision.
- function_seven 6y agoIt wouldn't have required a laborious review process. A quick skim through the list, looking at 20 or so random recipients near the top, middle, and bottom, would have quickly shown that frontline workers were clustered near the end. You would have seen that some people were WFH, but at the top. This wasn't some random HR benefits process that they screwed up. It was a triage process. A medical triage process. That's what they should be good at.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoFrom the article, it sounds like they did notice, but didn't have time to revise the plan before vaccinations started today. And again, I'm not claiming that this was necessarily the right decision, but I can't get behind the idea that it's some transparently evil decision made by uncaring administrators.
- fairity 6y agoWell, we're all agreed that this was a dumb mistake that could've been easily avoided. And, the admins should own up to it and implement a QA process to avoid a second occurrence. That said, I think the reason this story is getting so much attention is because of the assumed selfish intent. And, that assumption is probably wrong.
- WalterSear 6y agoThis is being painted as a technical error, but the only actual mistake was a miscalculation of the amount of blowback they would receive.
- pbourke 6y agoIt sounds like the administration wanted a scapegoat on which to hang any blame around vaccine allocation. Surely whichever allocation they came up with would have axes along which it could be criticized. Enter some poor analyst working with a pile of messy data and “The Algorithm”. If machine learning can be “money laundering for bias”, then “algorithms” can be money laundering for responsibility.
- ghaff 6y ago"Designed"? They had a meeting and discussed what criteria they should use, someone documented that, and someone else wrote some Excel.
- edmundsauto 6y agoYou were there?
- ghaff 6y agoNo. But I have been in a great many meetings where decisions were "designed."
- edmundsauto 6y agoWhat makes you believe your experience is generalizable to other situations?
- BurningFrog 6y agoIt's a software bug, by an organization that doesn't normally produce software. They've agreed it's wrong, and intend to fix it. Send like a very average Thursday to me!
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoThe article addresses this: > While leadership is pointing to an error in an algorithm meant to ensure equity and justice, our understanding is this error was identified on Tuesday and a decision was made not to revise the vaccine allocation scheme before its release today
- jules 6y agoWhat does that even mean? Surely the utility function being optimised by the algorithm is quality of life adjusted years saved by the vaccine? Surely they do not value different people's lives differently based on their group identity, but then what does that statement mean?
- lock-free 6y agoThe issue is not the algorithm but that the issues with it were identified in the days before the allotments finalized. Meaning: administrators saw that the results were dumb, and didn't compensate.
- bosswipe 6y agoI don't like the use of the word algorithm there. I would call it rules or formulas. Algorithm makes it sound like something more complicated when it was probably just a SQL query.