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So let's examine our axioms: I'd, in some ways, expect Dr. Hanna to ascribe to the axiom that predictive policing is unethical. As such, applied research into

So let's examine our axioms: I'd, in some ways, expect Dr. Hanna to ascribe to the axiom that predictive policing is unethical. As such, applied research into "improving" predictive policing would also sit squarely in the unethical space. And I expect that's all you're going to get at an ML conference (outside of explicitly ethics/critique papers): "Our model predicts crime 4.2% better than competing models" However, I'm not convinced that research into the meta-question "Can predictive policing be done ethically" would be considered equally unethical. ML is only a very small part of that meta question though. You're looking at much more complex socio-political changes that don't belong at NeurIPS ("do we need to change policing so that predictive policing can be done ethically"). > ethics saying they can't study minimum wages or tax increases In general, we have far more oversight into the elected officials who manage tax and minimum wage policy than police forces. These structural differences in influence and oversight play into the need for self-regulation. > Relevant expertise matters. There's nothing that prevents a think tank from working with domain experts (in fact, iiuc this is often what happens: a think tank will contract out to domain experts to write a report on some subject). Now there's all kinds of other conflict of interest issues with think tanks, but we all know that already.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
But I just don't see how you can meaningfully study the ethics of predictive policing without building potential predictive policing models and studying them for flaws. How can we talk in generalities about the ethics of predictive policing if we don't know how it works or what its effects are? I've seen articles that try to, and they just get dragged into the larger political debate about whether police are good in general.
croissants 6y ago
> There's nothing that prevents a think tank from working with domain experts One issue here is that the pool of domain experts depends on the different incentives faced by different researchers. If the top machine learning conferences all decide to reject papers about predictive policing, then this will reduce the incentive for machine learning researchers (who mostly want to publish in these conferences) to work in the area at all. Maybe critics of predictive policing think this is good, or think that it's better for the field to restrict itself to the few computer science researchers who are prepared to seriously devote themselves to it? But there don't seem to be very many of them. And, as someone who thinks there is a lot of room for police departments to in general do a better job --- and I think most of the people arguing against predictive policing would believe the same! --- it's disappointing to me that the end result of this argument seems to be disincentivizing technical research on it.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

But I just don't see how you can meaningfully study the ethics of predictive policing without building potential predictive policing models and studying them for flaws. How can we talk in generalities about the ethics of predictive policing if we don't know how it works or what its effects are? I've seen articles that try to, and they just get dragged into the larger political debate about whether police are good in general.

croissants 6y ago

> There's nothing that prevents a think tank from working with domain experts One issue here is that the pool of domain experts depends on the different incentives faced by different researchers. If the top machine learning conferences all decide to reject papers about predictive policing, then this will reduce the incentive for machine learning researchers (who mostly want to publish in these conferences) to work in the area at all. Maybe critics of predictive policing think this is good, or think that it's better for the field to restrict itself to the few computer science researchers who are prepared to seriously devote themselves to it? But there don't seem to be very many of them. And, as someone who thinks there is a lot of room for police departments to in general do a better job --- and I think most of the people arguing against predictive policing would believe the same! --- it's disappointing to me that the end result of this argument seems to be disincentivizing technical research on it.