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I hear you on this but I think it crosses the line from 'ethics' to 'activism'. The ethical concern would be, "don't build a racist AI system that assumes blac

I hear you on this but I think it crosses the line from 'ethics' to 'activism'. The ethical concern would be, "don't build a racist AI system that assumes black people don't pay back loans". This could be mitigated by removing race and clear proxies such as zip code from training data, but it doesn't necessarily break your cycle, because the poverty and social problems are real and exist regardless of whether the AI considers race. The anti-racist approach, on the other hand, would specifically require incorporating race so you can perform affirmative action. Maybe that's good for society, maybe there's a debate about how much and in what way you do it, who pays for it, etc. But it's left "ethics" far behind and become "politics" at that point IMO.

slg 6y ago
>This could be mitigated by removing race and clear proxies such as zip code from training data It isn't this simple. Not all these proxies are clear. Also what are we even left with once all these proxies are removed? The zip code is hugely important when trying to establish the value of a home. Does removing all data that is potentially racially biased leave us with a model that is nearly worthless? >But it's left "ethics" far behind and become "politics" at that point IMO. It depends entirely on what branch of moral philosophy to which you subscribe. For a lot of people their personal politics is just applied ethics meaning not acting would be ethically wrong in their opinion.