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Thursday, July 08, 2021

Algorithmic Impact Assessments

Welcome  to Algorithmic Impact Assessments.  I should note that I have done optimization and statistical models for decades, and this has very, very rarely come up.   And then only when included in a risk analysis that indicated potential errors being made.   Will all business process be under detailed scrutiny?    Article linked to below is interesting.

Assembling Accountability, from the Ground Up     in  Point.datasociety.net

Algorithmic impact assessments should leverage diverse expertise & complex histories

By Emanuel Moss, Ranjit Singh, Elizabeth Anne Watkins, and Jacob Metcalf

By now, it is a tired trope: Sen. Orrin Hatch asking Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money. Zuckerberg replying with a wry “Senator, we run ads.” Another congressperson grilling Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, about the Apple iPhone, made by Apple.

Lawmakers, it is said, don’t understand technology well enough to regulate it. They are too old. They are out of touch. They have disinvested from staff and other experts that could help them understand it. And while all those criticisms may be true, why should we expect our lawmakers to become individual experts on every challenge facing society? There are advocacy groups, community activists, forensic technologists, thoughtful developers, and critical scholars who have devoted their careers to building expertise on these issues. Given the burgeoning influence of algorithmic systems over social affairs, and an increasing awareness of the harmful impacts of these powerful systems, we are at a moment in which complex sociotechnical systems require robust, adaptable regulation — and legislatures and regulatory bodies are drafting new rules.

Our new report Assembling Accountability  demonstrates a pressing need to establish algorithmic impact assessment practices from the ground up, which requires cultivating and synthesizing a broad consensus of expertise from industry, scholars, and public interest advocates, including people from affected communities.  ... ' 

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