Replacing Judgment with Algorithms
Schneier makes a startling claim:<p><i>It&#x27;s already illegal for these algorithms to have discriminatory outcomes, even if they&#x27;re not deliberately designed in. This concept needs to be expanded. We as a society need to understand what we expect out of the algorithms that automatically judge us and ensure that those expectations are met.</i><p>Schneier is discussing an unpleasant fact; unbiased algorithms often discover that things we previously attributed to bias were actually unbiased predictors. But we don&#x27;t like to admit this, so we instead make silly statements like the above.<p>If we want to mandate the outcome of our decision process, let&#x27;s just do that openly and honestly. E.g. for credit, just impose a quota of credit that must be issued to each protected class.<p>If we want fair and unbiased decisions then we need to instead examine the internals of our process and accept the outcomes, whatever they may be.<p>But we need to stop pretending we can do both.