[jstanley]

Racism is discrimination based on race, everything else is not racism.

[danso]

How does that address the parent commenter’s assertion? Discrimination, whether intended or not, has the same outcome for the discrimated party.

[50656E6973]

Statistical differences in outcome cannot be automatically attributed to discrimination, though they frequently are

[hannasanarion]

Yes they can, because that's what "discrimination" means: differences in outcome due to uncontrollable irrelevant factors like race. Discrimination is an effect, not an intent. Racist intent is called "prejudice". Discrimination can be caused by prejudice, or it can be caused by something else, like a poorly considered algorithm.

[50656E6973]

No, that's pseudo-social-science because it falsely assumes outcomes are solely determined by external variables and is completely ignorant of internal variables, such as differing cultural values.

Some cultures value family life over money, others value money over family life, for example.

[hannasanarion]

I'm sorry, this reply doesn't make sense to me. What does "different cultures are different" have to do with whether computer systems can be discriminatory or not?

[fiter]

The FICO example from another thread shows a different outcome based on race without any data in the computer system about race.

If the computer system doesn't have access to race, like in the FICO example, then can it be discriminating based on race (racist)?

[50656E6973]

I agree, of course computers extend and amplify our prejudices.

But as the article states in it's conclusion:

>Just because something is expressed in numbers doesn’t make it right

Many statistical social differences are often automatically attributed to discrimination based solely on "numbers".

[billy_beef]

you should ignore that comment, it's an incredibly disingenuous claim intended to mask the racist sentiment that 'non-white people are over-represented in american prison populations because they don't value not being in prison as much as white people do'.

[StellarTabi]

It is racist if the data is built on 100s of years of racism and the ML is trained on a dataset poisoned by racism.

[cmiles74]

I think it's important to note that there is no algorithm that can have an "intent". If we are to agree that racism is a feature of intent, then there will never be a racist algorithm. Yet the outcome will still be discriminatory.