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An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her. (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 4 months ago (33 children)

I really have a hard time deciding if that is the scandal the article makes it out to be (although there is some backpedaling going on). The crucial point is: 8% of the decisions turn out to be wrong or misjudged. The article seems to want us to think that the use of the algorithm is to blame. Yet, is it? Is there evidence that a human would have judged those cases differently? Is there evidence that the algorithm does a worse job than humans? If not, then the article devolves onto blatant fear mongering and the message turns from "algorithm is to blame for deaths" into "algorithm unable to predict the future in 100% of cases", which of course it can't...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (4 children)

The crucial point is: 8% of the decisions turn out to be wrong or misjudged.

The article says:

Yet roughly 8 percent of women who the algorithm found to be at negligible risk and 14 percent at low risk have reported being harmed again, according to Spain’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the system.

Granted, neither "negligible" or "low risk" means "no risk", but I think 8% and 14% are far too high numbers for those categories.

Furthermore, there's this crucial bit:

At least 247 women have also been killed by their current or former partner since 2007 after being assessed by VioGén, according to government figures. While that is a tiny fraction of gender violence cases, it points to the algorithm’s flaws. The New York Times found that in a judicial review of 98 of those homicides, 55 of the slain women were scored by VioGén as negligible or low risk for repeat abuse.

So in the 98 murders they reviewed, the algorithm put more than 50% of them at negligible or low risk for repeat abuse. That's a fucking coin flip!

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