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If you look at the demographics of people convicted after being flagged by a flawed algorithm, you'll find a lot of correlelations. Pick a totally spurious indi
by tedunangst 6y ago
If you look at the demographics of people convicted after being flagged by a flawed algorithm, you'll find a lot of correlelations. Pick a totally spurious indicator. Whether you live in a house with an odd or even number. If the algorithm decides odd numbers are highly indicative of fraud, and those are 90% of cases that get investigated, then you're going to have 90% of convictions happen to have odd house numbers. "See, look, the algorithm works!"
- neoburkian 6y agoWhile plausible, there are a lot of 'if's that underpin this scenario. In particular, you need people to not notice that the conviction rate is 50% for both odd and even numbered households.
- Rule35 6y agoNo, that implies the algorithm is wrong and the chance of crime is equal. If there was an actual bias, and you searched 90% of homes based on that, you'd expect closer to 100% of the arrests to be in those homes.