
Can Algorithms Help Us Unlearn Workplace Biases? - qwerty242586
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/algorithms-learn-our-workplace-biases-can-they-help-us-unlearn-them.html
======
allovernow
Of course it can! You can train any bias you want into your neural net. The
question is how long your engineers will buy it, and whether the socially
acceptable default position, that men and women should expect identical
outcomes given identical opportunities, is actually true - because that is
neither theoretically not empiricially verified, despite what outlets like NYT
[and third wave feminists in general] are desperate to have you believe.

Before you flag and downvote, please seriously consider my last point, a
reckoning may be quickly approaching Western society. We have taken for
granted the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of outcome -
how will Western society respond if (I'm not saying when, but if) neural nets
consistently predict gendered differences? Will we revert some of our recent
assumptions regarding human nature, or will we collectively insist that the
data is bad until it is massaged to show the results we expect?

