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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 18 2016, @12:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the does-not-add-up dept.

The BBC is reporting on the Compas assessment, Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions. This tool is used by a number of agencies to assess if someone is likely to commit additional crimes and the resulting score is used in determining bail, sentencing, or determining parole. The article points out that while the questions on the assessment do not include race the resulting score may be correlated with race but this is disputed by the software's creators. The assessment scores someone on a 10 point scale but the algorithm used to determine someone's score is kept secret. Because of this defendants are unable to effectively dispute that the score is incorrect.


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  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:21PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:21PM (#415722) Journal

    If it's secret then propublica, or anyone for that matter cant be sure how it works regardless of what the makers of Compas say it does. It could be a neural net, or it could be 100x simpler and the veil of secrecy is to give the impression of a complex system. Iv'e seen it before. Proprietary this, secret that. And int he end its a hamster in a wheel or some other silly or simple system that is made to look way more complex or difficult to implement to keep the customer locked into contracts.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @07:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @07:03PM (#415801)

    > If it's secret then propublica, or anyone for that matter cant be sure how it works regardless of what the makers of Compas say it does.

    Oh give it up. Sometimes when you don't RTFA you guess wrong. Jesus christ already. Its crazy how you contort yourself into all these weird logic poses just because your ego is so fragile.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @07:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @07:26PM (#415811)

      But how the algorithm gets from the answers to the score out of 10 is kept secret.

      From the article. What on earth does this have to do with ego? This sounds like a bot, using generalized insults to derail a conversation. If it is not, then you should read the article yourself and maybe you'd see the quote I added.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @09:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2016, @09:47PM (#415872)

        The ego problem is that even when challenged he couldn't be arsed enough to actually go and verify the challenge. Instead he just spewed more self-rationalization. The door was left open, it couldn't have been easier for him to walk through and win the argument, but he didn't even do that. He just made up more shit to defend his original shit.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:22AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @04:22AM (#415998)

          He brought up the point that if this is secret, there's no real way to tell how it works, regardless of what anyone claims. I don't see you debunking that.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:37AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:37AM (#416058) Homepage
    Ferranti once realised they'd find it hard to make their first delivery of an IT system to the UK navy. On scouring the fine print, they realised that the only thing that was unambiguously specified for the first drop was the weight of the system. So they delivered boxes of sand weighing the appropriate amount, and clearly having no electronics at all. And got away with it.

    This system may be equally well specified.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves