[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)?

[billy_beef]

Yes, if the data contains proxies for race and/or unexamined racialized bias, then yes it can. Police presence has often been kept higher in zipcodes with mostly non-white residents. This results in higher arrest rates in an area because of increased eyes, not necessarily because of increased rates of law-breaking. If an algorithm were to be designed to determine where to allocate police officers using this data, it could contain no racial data, but it would dictate that more officers should be placed in the zipcode with more non-white residents, as those areas have more arrests. Perhaps you don't want to call this racist because you have a narrow definition of that word, but I don't know what other word to use.

[fiter]

My apologies for not linking to the other thread, but as far as I can tell, there are no proxies for race used to calculate FICO scores.

[billy_beef]

Without the data, I have a hard time believing this. Especially since I had to explain the concept.

Even if that were the case, you're still left with a small set of conclusions about race and its correlation to FICO score. 1) Non-white people are worse at maintaining credit scores because of something inherent to the condition of non-whiteness. This conclusion quickly points in the direction of racist psuedo-science. 2) Social and economic forces do not act equally on people of different skin colors. This is easily proven true by the example discussed by AOC and ta'nehisi coates of people of color being explicitly excluded from provisions the New Deal, an issue that has compounded the inequality between people of different racial backgrounds. This is directly applicable to FICO scores as white people are more often able to access generational wealth to pay of debts and avoid low credit scores whereas people of color are not.

Sooo, in the case of FICO, even if the score doesn't contain subtle proxies for race which I doubt, it is still predicated preserving a system that contains intense racial bias.

[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'.