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by anonytrary 2705 days ago
It's not lying. Maybe it's being wrong, maybe it's negligence, but it's not lying. It's not like they're trying to display the wrong information. The algorithm isn't a person. It's not as simple as saying "oh, our algorithm messed up, we'll kindly tell it to say that you live over there from now on".

I wouldn't call it lying, I'd call it a sub-optimal algorithm design.

1 comments

Generally, the person or group of people behind an algorithm needs to be fully accountable and responsible for the algorithm they use to interact with the world.

If saying: "it's not me, it's the algorithm" gets you out of the responsibility you can do all kinds of morally questionable things.

(edit: grammeer)

"It's not me, it's the killbot algorithm I designed, patented, and licensed!"

In seriousness, though, I agree and we're already way behind the eight-ball on this one, given predictive policing and bail algorithms.