Digifesto

Continuing with O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction on to Chapter 2, “Bomb Parts”. This is a popular book and these are quick chapters. But that’s no reason to underestimate them! This is some of the most lucid work I’ve read on algorithmic fairness.

This chapter talks about three kinds of “models” used in prediction and decision making, with three examples. O’Neil speak highly of the kinds of models used in baseball to predict the trajectory of hits and determine the optimal placement of people in the field. (Ok, I’m not so good at baseball terms). These are good, O’Neil says, because they are transparent, they are consistently adjusted with new data, and the goals are well defined.

O’Neil then very charmingly writes about the model she uses mentally to determine how to feed her family. She juggles a lot of variables: the preferences of her kids, the nutrition and cost of ingredients, and time. This is all hugely relatable–everybody does something like this. Her point, it seems, is that this form of “model” encodes a lot of opinions or “ideology” because it reflects her values.

O’Neil then discusses recidivism prediction, specifically the LSI-R (Level of Service Inventory–Revised) tool. It asks questions like “How many previous convictions have you had?” and uses that to predict likelihood of future prediction. The problem is that (a) this is sensitive to overpolicing in neighborhoods, which has little to do with actual recidivism rates (as opposed to rearrest rates), and (b) e.g. black neighborhoods are more likely to be overpoliced, meaning that the tool, which is not very good at predicting recidivism, has disparate impact. This is an example of what O’Neil calls an (eponymous) weapon of math destruction.(WMD)

She argues that the three qualities of a WMD are Scale, Opacity, and Damage. Which makes sense.

As I’ve said, I think this is a better take on algorithmic ethics than almost anything I’ve read on the subject before. Why?

First, it doesn’t use the word “algorithm” at all. That is huge, because 95% of the time the use of the word “algorithmic” in the technology-and-society literature is stupid. People use “algorithm” when they really mean “software”. Now, they use “AI System” to mean “a company”. It’s ridiculous.

O’Neil makes it clear in this chapter that what she’s talking about are different kinds of models. Models can be in ones head (as in her plan for feeding her family) or in a computer, and both kinds of models can be racist. That’s a helpful, sane view. It’s been the consensus of computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and AI types for decades.

The problem with WMDs, as opposed to other, better models, is that the WMDS models are unhinged from reality. O’Neil’s complaint is not with use of models, but rather that models are being used without being properly trained using sound sampling on data and statistics. WMDs are not artificially intelligences; they are artificial stupidities.

In more technical terms, it seems like the problem with WMDs is not that they don’t properly trade off predictive accuracy with fairness, as some computer science literature would suggest is necessary. It’s that the systems have high error rates in the first place because the training and calibration systems are poorly designed. What’s worse, this avoidable error is disparately distributed, causing more harm to some groups than others.

This is a wonderful and eye-opening account of unfairness in the models used by automated decision-making systems (note the language). Why? Because it shows that there is a connection between statistical bias, the kind of bias that creates distortions in a quantitative predictive process, and social bias, the kind of bias people worry about politically, which consistently uses the term in both ways. If there is statistical bias that is weighing against some social group, then that’s definitely, 100% a form of bias.

Importantly, this kind of bias–statistical bias–is not something that every model must have. Only badly made models have it. It’s something that can be mitigated using scientific rigor and sound design. If we see the problem the way O’Neil sees it, then we can see clearly how better science, applied more rigorously, is also good for social justice.

As a scientist and technologist, it’s been terribly discouraging in the past years to be so consistently confronted with a false dichotomy between sound engineering and justice. At last, here’s a book that clearly outlines how the opposite is the case!