Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by biztos 2944 days ago
Yeah but -- assuming this could work in theory -- is it actually possible to give it examples if you don't know all its inputs?

For instance what if when scraping social media it discovers that a tendency to post memes with the color green together with frequent mention of cats correlates to better Python skills, but it happens that Elbonians are forbidden by law to mention cats? Would the system even know that's what it found? Would it even be knowable in the end? Would that be an immoral outcome even if the system didn't know about the Elbonian Anti-Cat Law? And wouldn't you have to know about the correlation already in order to give it "moral" and "immoral" examples?

I agree that litigation (the threat of litigation) is going to remain a factor for a long time, but I see this potentially turning into some kind of black-box system where there might be very serious discrimination but it would be impossible to prove.

[edit: corrected for spell-check, and apologies to any Albanians who like cats. :-)]