Originally published in The San Francisco Chronicle (the cover article of Sunday’s “Insight” section) What if the data tells you to be racist? Without the right precautions, machine learning — the technology that drives risk-assessment in law enforcement, as well as hiring and loan decisions — explicitly penalizes underprivileged groups. Left to its own devices, the algorithm will count a black defendant’s race as a strike against them. Yet some data scientists are calling to turn off the safeguards and unleash computerized prejudice, signaling an emerging threat that supersedes the well-known concerns about inadvertent machine bias. Imagine sitting
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