It certainly made me roll my eyes, but I've read enough Slate to know what they mean. The software makes decisions on metrics casually correlated with race. B

It certainly made me roll my eyes, but I've read enough Slate to know what they mean. The software makes decisions on metrics casually correlated with race. Basically it's the codification of institutional racism. Some contemporary political trends refer to "institutional racism" as just "racism," which causes other readers/listeners to hear "prejudice/bigotry racism." By skipping a few steps in the causality chain and playing with definitions it is possible to make eye-grabbing statements. "Computers are racially biased" sounds WAY more sinister than the (not much) longer explanation. The eye-popping version is at best a hook to get people to care about an issue. At worst the in-group signaling about tangential issues can cause something worth broadly considering to be thoughtlessly bundled up into existing narratives and political groups. Then nobody will care about the issue itself, but instead whatever their bandwagon has pre-determined to be the opinion to have. FWIW: I think there is a lot to be considered about unintended consequences of removing humans from decision loops. After reading the intro to that Slate article, I'm pretty sure it isn't happening there and closed the tab.