An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
With all of these scare mongering headlines (paywalled article), I need to know... how bad are the humans (without algorithms) compared to the .... algorithms.
Police making mistakes (should) be held accountable for them. They often aren't, but that's a slightly different problem
With an algorithm that is "usually more accurate than an individual", it would be irresponsible to allow the individual to make a decision right? But then you can't hold anyone or anything accountable
I'm not sure we're quite ready to be living in a post-accountability world
The cops* have had processes for years, some of which are sensible and useful and some of which are seemingly sensible but terrible, and some of which are nonsense. Over time, one hopes, the worst of the processes (or the worst steps in some processes) get winnowed out and/or replaced.
Also machinery is integrated into processes and over time its efficacy is evaluated ("shot spotters": worse than useless; police in patrol cars: better in some ways, much worse in others).
But somehow when a mechanically computed algorithm is used as a step in a process, all of this sort of reasoning goes out the window and now it's scary.
* and everybody else
Humans following procedure can be analyzed in meaningful ways by non-technical third parties to figure out where a failure point is
Black box program algorithms cannot. They require experts to analyze, who are also often the people who own the algorithm and wrote it in the first place
And a lot of forensic techniques, like fingerprints, flame spreading, graphology and others are epistemologically less sound than the kind of algo discussed in this article yet people seem comfortable with them. At least phrenology has been abandoned (AFAIK...eek)
abdication-of-responsibility-as-a-service
Right, but those are things that can be investigated. If it turns out the officer didn't use good judgment, or was drunk on the job when they made the choice or was otherwise negligent, there absolutely should be consequences, no?
But how do you do this with a black box algorithm?
These use tragic single incident examples to legitimize laws that are then used to prosecute men in divorce.
Google "Silver Bullet Divorce Strategy"
Go kick rocks NYTimes.