"While it is clear why such emotive subjects would be considered ripe for The Formula, the central problem once again comes down to the spectral promise of algorithmic objectivity. “We are all so scared of human bias and inconsistency,” says Danielle Citron, professor of law at the University of Maryland. “At the same time, we are overconfident about what it is that computers can do.”
The mistake, Citron suggests, is that we “trust algorithms, because we think of them as objective, whereas the reality is that humans craft those algorithms and can embed in them all sorts of biases and perspectives.” To put it another way, a computer algorithm might be unbiased in its execution, but, as noted, this does not mean that there is not bias encoded within it."
- Date Published:11/19/2014
- Original Publication:Wired