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It turns out we actually have laws that answer that question: you cannot determine the loan rate based on protected characteristics. In fact, that's what "prote
by seoaeu 5y ago
It turns out we actually have laws that answer that question: you cannot determine the loan rate based on protected characteristics. In fact, that's what "protected" means in this context.
Laundering the bias through an algorithm doesn't make it any more OK or more legal, it just makes it harder to detect the discrimination.
- commandlinefan 5y agoThat's the "disparate impact" line of reasoning: if anything results in unequal outcomes, no matter how evenly-handed it was administered, it is racist and must be adjusted until the outcomes are "equitable". It shouldn't be hard (although apparently is for some people) to see what a disaster that line of thinking is.
- hackinthebochs 5y agoThis doesn't really address the core issue. There's a difference between determining loan rate based on race of the applicant, and using features that correlate with failed loan repayment that happen to overrepresented among black people. While it is illegal to use race as an input to your algorithm, biases in outcomes will still be present given the bias in the relevant non-protected properties. Are ML algorithms required to normalize for race in the face of bias in the relevant variables?