6 ms·

It seems the appropriate method to judge this approach is in comparison to the baseline referenced at the start: humans making “black box” judgement calls that

by onos 5y ago

It seems the appropriate method to judge this approach is in comparison to the baseline referenced at the start: humans making “black box” judgement calls that are subject to the individual judge’s biases. If the computer programmed decision making were (already is?) transparent, then we could critique it and work to ensure something resembling fair is encoded.

ljm 5y ago
How would you define 'fair'? I've a few examples, gathered from being alive and hearing what other people think for a few decades. 1. It's fair to punish someone else if you let another off the hook 2. It's fair to treat someone more harshly if you don't like what they've done 3. It's fair to turn the other cheek because they're a friend 4. It's fair to treat someone differently because of where they came from or their skin colour 5. It's fair to give someone a pass because they did you a favour 6. It's fair to be unfair because you owe someone a favour 7. It's unfair to be a victim who doesn't get justice 8. It's unfair to be an innocent person who is prosecuted for someone else's crime 9. It's unfair to not get what you wait 10. It's fair to get what you want You will find a variation of all of these examples across the world right now. The point is, fairness is loaded with bias and therefore any algorithm that tries to deal with 'fairness' is going to inherit the bias of those who designed it.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  You make really good points. Life is bizarre and human culture is extremely contradictory and difficult to quantify. And what's worse our definition of 'fair' maybe advancing just like culture is constantly advancing. African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s when they we're considered less than a full person by the legal system for example. And maybe in the future drug offenses may be considered not a big deal. They call the Constitution a living document. This algorithm may have to be a living algorithm. What if it was open source and constantly updated and reviewed to reach consensus? There would probably also have to be human appeal processes. I definitely think this is intriguing as a first-level sentencing determination though.
  - ljm 5y ago
    > African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s Fucking hell, man.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      ?
      - fidesomnes 5y ago
        You did not demonstrate enough navel gazing and bemoaning of original sin all non people of color are guilty of. If I knew were you worked I could have you fired.
    - claylevering 5y ago
      ...YIKES.
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        ?
    - CyanBird 5y ago
      I completely fail to see what's the issue with what OP said, care to explain? It is completely accurate, algorithms are built by people whom live inmersed on their own temporary and geographically atomized cultures, just look at modern supposed ""unbiased"" algorithms used to ""prevent crime"", it is just racial biases baked in
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        I am super confused as well. Lol. This website is really strange.
        ZephyrBlu 5y ago
geephroh 5y ago
"Computer programmed decision making" is anything but transparent currently. Just look at the example of Northpointe, Inc.'s COMPAS ("Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions") tool, which purports to measure recidivism risk. Even under threat of lawsuit, Northpointe refused to reveal the underlying source because it is a "protected trade secret."[1] Are judges biased? Of course, and that is not acceptable. However, the answer is not to surrender our system of justice to unaccountable commercial actors. 1. https://www.uclalawreview.org/injustice-ex-machina-predictive-algorithms-in-criminal-sentencing/ https://www.uclalawreview.org/injustice-ex-machina-predictiv...
- pyuser583 5y ago
  “Compas” was also the name of the test used by Wisconsin community colleges to assess students. It was legally required that all community college students take it, even if they were only taking a single course. It seemed like a really corrupt arrangement. Want to take a language class to complete a high school requirement? You have to pay $100 to a for profit company to assess your math skills. Seems community colleges no longer use a test branded as “Compas”. Edit: it was “Compass” and discontinued in 2015 over concerns of its accuracy. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/18/act-drops-popular-compass-placement-test-acknowledging-its-predictive-limits https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/18/act-drops-pop...
romwell 5y ago
"Something resembling fair", i.e. unfair? We already have that. Not that the idea of codifying fairness is new; a certain guy named Hammurabi started the trend a while ago. The result of humanity's collective attempt to create a Transparent Fairness Flowchart still leaves much to be desired. Replacing codex with code, will, however, streamline the process by entirely removing (the already meager) accountability for bad decisions, as well making it effectively impossible to correct them: "Computer says no" [1] [1] https://youtu.be/0n_Ty_72Qds https://youtu.be/0n_Ty_72Qds
masswerk 5y ago
I can actually see a use case in earmarking court decisions for review that are far off from what may have been expected. Handing over the decision altogether, however, is like handing justice over to a theatrical magician ("The Great Fully Automated Barnum Court"): it's commercially incentivized, you may not know the trick, because it's a trade secret, and it's not the real thing, either. (But, exactly because of this, people will fall for it.) Also, judgement is very much about discerning correlation from causation, so correlation based data may not be the best foundation, to begin with.
- noduerme 5y ago
  This reminded me of something I read, and I can't recall whether it was in Argentina under the junta, or in North Korea, or in the USSR ...but the gist was that people sentenced for minor crimes or for irritating the state were essentially assigned random sentences and punishments, divorced from or even absurdly light or harsh relative to their suppose crimes, as a way of terrorizing the population. Or maybe I'm thinking of a Kafka story, or Dostoevsky's mock execution. Or 1984. Shit. I've lost it. [edit] Might have been from the Killing Fields. Wow, this is really dredging up a lot of wonderful historical references...
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    Don't forget the film Brazil, where a bug-induced misprinted warrant leads to an obviously wrong person being arrested and then interrogated to death, because how could the machine be wrong?

by onos 5y ago

ljm 5y ago

How would you define 'fair'? I've a few examples, gathered from being alive and hearing what other people think for a few decades. 1. It's fair to punish someone else if you let another off the hook 2. It's fair to treat someone more harshly if you don't like what they've done 3. It's fair to turn the other cheek because they're a friend 4. It's fair to treat someone differently because of where they came from or their skin colour 5. It's fair to give someone a pass because they did you a favour 6. It's fair to be unfair because you owe someone a favour 7. It's unfair to be a victim who doesn't get justice 8. It's unfair to be an innocent person who is prosecuted for someone else's crime 9. It's unfair to not get what you wait 10. It's fair to get what you want You will find a variation of all of these examples across the world right now. The point is, fairness is loaded with bias and therefore any algorithm that tries to deal with 'fairness' is going to inherit the bias of those who designed it.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
You make really good points. Life is bizarre and human culture is extremely contradictory and difficult to quantify. And what's worse our definition of 'fair' maybe advancing just like culture is constantly advancing. African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s when they we're considered less than a full person by the legal system for example. And maybe in the future drug offenses may be considered not a big deal. They call the Constitution a living document. This algorithm may have to be a living algorithm. What if it was open source and constantly updated and reviewed to reach consensus? There would probably also have to be human appeal processes. I definitely think this is intriguing as a first-level sentencing determination though.
- ljm 5y ago
  > African Americans may have been treated poorly by the algorithm back in the 1700s Fucking hell, man.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    ?
    - fidesomnes 5y ago
      You did not demonstrate enough navel gazing and bemoaning of original sin all non people of color are guilty of. If I knew were you worked I could have you fired.
  - claylevering 5y ago
    ...YIKES.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      ?
  - CyanBird 5y ago
    I completely fail to see what's the issue with what OP said, care to explain? It is completely accurate, algorithms are built by people whom live inmersed on their own temporary and geographically atomized cultures, just look at modern supposed ""unbiased"" algorithms used to ""prevent crime"", it is just racial biases baked in
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      I am super confused as well. Lol. This website is really strange.
      - ZephyrBlu 5y ago

geephroh 5y ago

"Computer programmed decision making" is anything but transparent currently. Just look at the example of Northpointe, Inc.'s COMPAS ("Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions") tool, which purports to measure recidivism risk. Even under threat of lawsuit, Northpointe refused to reveal the underlying source because it is a "protected trade secret."[1] Are judges biased? Of course, and that is not acceptable. However, the answer is not to surrender our system of justice to unaccountable commercial actors. 1. https://www.uclalawreview.org/injustice-ex-machina-predictive-algorithms-in-criminal-sentencing/ https://www.uclalawreview.org/injustice-ex-machina-predictiv...

pyuser583 5y ago
“Compas” was also the name of the test used by Wisconsin community colleges to assess students. It was legally required that all community college students take it, even if they were only taking a single course. It seemed like a really corrupt arrangement. Want to take a language class to complete a high school requirement? You have to pay $100 to a for profit company to assess your math skills. Seems community colleges no longer use a test branded as “Compas”. Edit: it was “Compass” and discontinued in 2015 over concerns of its accuracy. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/18/act-drops-popular-compass-placement-test-acknowledging-its-predictive-limits https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/18/act-drops-pop...

romwell 5y ago

"Something resembling fair", i.e. unfair? We already have that. Not that the idea of codifying fairness is new; a certain guy named Hammurabi started the trend a while ago. The result of humanity's collective attempt to create a Transparent Fairness Flowchart still leaves much to be desired. Replacing codex with code, will, however, streamline the process by entirely removing (the already meager) accountability for bad decisions, as well making it effectively impossible to correct them: "Computer says no" [1] [1] https://youtu.be/0n_Ty_72Qds https://youtu.be/0n_Ty_72Qds

masswerk 5y ago

I can actually see a use case in earmarking court decisions for review that are far off from what may have been expected. Handing over the decision altogether, however, is like handing justice over to a theatrical magician ("The Great Fully Automated Barnum Court"): it's commercially incentivized, you may not know the trick, because it's a trade secret, and it's not the real thing, either. (But, exactly because of this, people will fall for it.) Also, judgement is very much about discerning correlation from causation, so correlation based data may not be the best foundation, to begin with.

noduerme 5y ago
This reminded me of something I read, and I can't recall whether it was in Argentina under the junta, or in North Korea, or in the USSR ...but the gist was that people sentenced for minor crimes or for irritating the state were essentially assigned random sentences and punishments, divorced from or even absurdly light or harsh relative to their suppose crimes, as a way of terrorizing the population. Or maybe I'm thinking of a Kafka story, or Dostoevsky's mock execution. Or 1984. Shit. I've lost it. [edit] Might have been from the Killing Fields. Wow, this is really dredging up a lot of wonderful historical references...
- crooked-v 5y ago
  Don't forget the film Brazil, where a bug-induced misprinted warrant leads to an obviously wrong person being arrested and then interrogated to death, because how could the machine be wrong?