[rrego]

Pretty lousy argument. Firstly, the majority of inmates in the US are white (58%). I'd assume mug shot stats are similar, or at the very least not mostly black people.

Moreover, if a algorithm enforces bias to the detriment of inoccents, it's a bad algorithm

[andrewguenther]

> Firstly, the majority of inmates in the US are white (58%). I'd assume mug shot stats are similar, or at the very least not mostly black people.

I actually did not know this. Thank you. I had conflated incarceration rate with inmate population. If anyone is curious for a source, see here: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race....

> Moreover, if a algorithm enforces bias to the detriment of inoccents, it's a bad algorithm

I agree with this 100%. But they haven't provided enough information about their dataset to make this conclusion. If they provided enough information for someone to independently analyze the data and reproduce the experiment, I would flip immediately.

[Kalium]

> Pretty lousy argument. Firstly, the majority of inmates in the US are white (58%). I'd assume mug shot stats are similar, or at the very least not mostly black people.

Personally, I would assume the mugshots are a random sample of a public corpus, and thus likely 35-40% people of color. Which is definitely skewed from the background population. I'm assuming the similarity of 40% is a coincidence.

> Moreover, if a algorithm enforces bias to the detriment of inoccents, it's a bad algorithm

Is it? It sounds like it might be working exactly as it was set up and specified to work. I would call that the fault of the designers and specifiers, rather than the algorithm. It's a good algorithm. It fits its purpose well. Its purposes just happen to be completely evil.