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The New York City Council has unanimously passed a bill to address algorithmic discrimination by city agencies. If signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City will establish a task force to study how city agencies use data and algorithms to make decisions, and whether systems appear to discriminate against certain groups:
The bill's sponsor, Council Member James Vacca, said he was inspired by ProPublica's investigation into racially biased algorithms used to assess the criminal risk of defendants. "My ambition here is transparency, as well as accountability," Vacca said.
A previous, more sweeping version of the bill had mandated that city agencies publish the source code of all algorithms being used for "targeting services" or "imposing penalties upon persons or policing" and to make them available for "self-testing" by the public. At a hearing at City Hall in October, representatives from the mayor's office expressed concerns that this mandate would threaten New Yorkers' privacy and the government's cybersecurity.
The bill was one of two moves the City Council made last week concerning algorithms. On Thursday, the committees on health and public safety held a hearing on the city's forensic methods, including controversial tools that the chief medical examiner's office crime lab has used for difficult-to-analyze samples of DNA. As a ProPublica/New York Times investigation detailed in September, an algorithm created by the lab for complex DNA samples has been called into question by scientific experts and former crime lab employees.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday December 21 2017, @12:19AM (11 children)
Take the human race as a whole, and use that as your insured universe.
You get the good with the bad, the sick with the healthy, the risk takers with careful.
Its a human and societal decision that we decide some discrimination is allowed so that some may have lower premiums than others. Its not a given fact of the universe.
The given facts dictate a 100% death rate.
When you look at it that way, you can see that insurance rates for everyone would all balance out, and the cost of insurance could be reduced by eliminating all the costs of artificial underwriting decisions. Because in the end, one size does fit all.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @12:55AM (2 children)
It is necessary because 20/80 rule applies to almost everything that is statistically determinate. Meaning 20% of the pool will always cause 80% of the cost. I find it to be staggeringly inefficient to just let it slide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @01:14AM
But aging will eventually move us all from the 80% of the pool to the 80% of the cost side, so it still balances.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:25PM
I find you staggeringly callous.
We're not talking about widgets.
We're talking about people with feelings, families, pets, friends.
So, in summary, disregarding your views as sociopathic and/or psychopathic.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fishybell on Thursday December 21 2017, @01:50AM
I'm perfectly fine with insurance discrimination based on choices people make, rather than things that just happened to them.
It's real simple.
Your car insurance goes up because you're a bad driver, not because hail damaged your car. Your health insurance goes up because you're a smoker, not because you're female.
Insurance companies raise your rates for essentially everything they think they can get away with, including merely staying with the same company.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by jmorris on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:05AM (3 children)
No retard, that is called "adverse selection" and it killed Obamacare. If all insurance costs the same, those on the losing end simply do not buy it, those at higher risk do and the insurance company goes kaput. So then you morons double down on the idiocy and mandate everyone buy it and that too fails because now you still reward risky behavior and extraneous claims.
The point of insurance is when faced with a risk of a loss greater than an individual, company, etc. can afford to pay if it happens, you join into a pool and pay based on risk (plus a profit margin for the underwriter) and should the event happen there should be sufficient money in the pool to cover the loss if the actuaries have done their jobs. But if the cost of insurance is too high you won't buy it. You might just take the chance of being ruined or you might change your risk profile. For example if flood insurance were returned to the free market it would be a lot more expensive so many people would stop living near water because they would not be able to afford it and yet the banks would require it to write a mortgage.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday December 21 2017, @12:14PM (2 children)
Fucking flood insurance. I can walk out my back door and look down at the rooves of houses half a block away. By the time my place flooded half the city would be under 20 metres of water. Yet because of banks mandating home insurance because I still have a mortgage, and the shitty state government mandating flood insurance on all home insurance, I still have to pay for fucking flood insurance.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @02:44PM (1 child)
Would that not cover your nice hilltop home in case of a mudslide?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:38PM
No chance of a mudslide here unless an asteroid hits. I'm most of the way up a long, gentle slope. It's not steep, probably only 5° or so, it just goes on a long way. There is excellent drainage, and not enough uphill land for run-off to ever be a problem.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Entropy on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:16AM (2 children)
No, not really. Some groups simply have a lot more risk than other groups. Here's a couple really obvious examples:
- A 70 year old man will have higher health expenses on average than a 18 year old man.
- A 40 year old man will have lower auto accident liability than an 16 year old man.
- Someone with a Ph.D will have lower auto accident liability than someone that is a high scholl dropout.
All of these are "on average". You can absolutely find exceptions, but if we take the entire group as a whole and combine all of the factors together then you get useful trends and some people should absolutely pay more than others for the same insurance.
Would you want to insure someone that has 20 accidents that are their fault at the same rate as someone that has had zero? Both having the same time driving vehicles? I think not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:28PM (1 child)
"high scholl dropout"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @06:40PM
Having comfortable shoes makes you drive better.