>if nobody knows why decisions impacting people's lives are made and it isn't possible to determine what they were done for, is that something we really want?
We do this every day with human cognition and nobody complains.
We do this every day with human cognition and nobody complains.
For example, for a classification task we usually train an algorithm on labeled data (i.e. good debtor vs. bad debtor). When trained, we apply the algorithms to ALL future decisions on whom to give a credit. This makes algorithms so dangerous as compared to humans, because if 10 out of 1000 bankers are racist and discriminate against certain groups of people we still have 990 that don't. If our algorithm is trained on data that contains racism it will discriminate in every single case if it has the data to do so.
And not only do we do this, we have to.
Generally speaking, individuals do not make decisions. They may influence decisions or find novel ways to apply rules, but anything organizationally important is written down somewhere.
Typically for legal purposes.