Predpol leak confirms that it drives racist policing
pluralistic.net
pluralistic.net
This is a great quote on confirmation bias in the article:
But confirmation bias isn't always an unconscious process. Consultancies like McKinsey have grown to multibillion-dollar titans by offering powerful people confirmation bias as a service: pay them enough and they'll produce a fancy report saying whatever you want to do is the best thing you possibly could do.
But TBH, the article itself is also guilty of confirmation bias. It is full of "everybody knows" [1] kind of arguments and exaggerations. "Driving while brown" isn't really a "de facto crime" in any reasonable sense.
The analysis of leak by The Markup he endorses doesn't look very objective either. The fact that the Predpol's algorithm suggests that the police should patrol the more dangerous neighbourhoods isn't really a good argument for showing that it is racially biased. At the very least, they should try to control for other factors somehow (e.g. by comparing poor neighbourhoods with different racial compositions).
There is indeed "a pool of mathematicians who can produce convincing confirmation bias as a service", as Doctorow says, but their prejudices are not mostly in the category and direction he suggests. [2]
[1]: https://archive.ph/VYsZ3#selection-335.61-335.76
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_American_ac...