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Algorithms 'consistently' more accurate than people in predicting recidivism, study says:
In a study with potentially far-reaching implications for criminal justice in the United States, a team of California researchers has found that algorithms are significantly more accurate than humans in predicting which defendants will later be arrested for a new crime.
[...] "Risk assessment has long been a part of decision-making in the criminal justice system," said Jennifer Skeem, a psychologist who specializes in criminal justice at UC Berkeley. "Although recent debate has raised important questions about algorithm-based tools, our research shows that in contexts resembling real criminal justice settings, risk assessments are often more accurate than human judgment in predicting recidivism. That's consistent with a long line of research comparing humans to statistical tools."
"Validated risk-assessment instruments can help justice professionals make more informed decisions," said Sharad Goel, a computational social scientist at Stanford University. "For example, these tools can help judges identify and potentially release people who pose little risk to public safety. But, like any tools, risk assessment instruments must be coupled with sound policy and human oversight to support fair and effective criminal justice reform."
The paper—"The limits of human predictions of recidivism"—was slated for publication Feb. 14, 2020, in Science Advances. Skeem presented the research on Feb. 13 in a news briefing at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Wash. Joining her were two co-authors: Ph.D. graduate Jongbin Jung and Ph.D. candidate Zhiyuan "Jerry" Lin, who both studied computational social science at Stanford.
More information:
Z. Lin, et al. The limits of human predictions of recidivism [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz0652)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @06:23AM
Everything is on a curve. Brilliant people can have idiotic children, but it's unlikely. And stupid people can have brilliant children, but it's also just unlikely. So for instance IQ is just one measure of intelligence, but it's at least a reasonable proxy. And adult IQ in in the latest studies is looking to be upwards of 80% [wikipedia.org] heritable. Heritability does not speak of the measured value itself, but the difference between two samples. If sample 1 has an IQ of 100, and sample 2 has an IQ of 140 - we'd expect that 32+ points of difference there are attributable to genetics, on average. I'll get into the children thing a minute. It's really really interesting, and quite weird!
So nothing I've suggested is saying that all blacks are dumb or that all East Asians (who tend to have the highest IQs) are smart. It simply says that if you take 1000 of each group, the percent that do end up smart or dumb, is going to be radically different. This is another thing that makes our Quixotic battle against everything that might be causing the discrepancy (beyond plain old genetics) all the more destructive. Because you can be led to believe, by pure randomness, that that windmill you just knocked down has you finally on the right path.
When you get into socioeconomic factors things get even nastier because it's so easy to reverse the order of causation. IQ is strongly correlated with wealth. And so it's easy to say 'wealth causes IQ' but that's pretty easy to disprove in a large number of ways. One is a simple logical problem. Wealth didn't always exist. It was created in some countries, but not in others. And the less naturally hospitable a country's geography is, the greater their trend towards wealth. Why might that be? I currently live right off the equator. It is absolutely beautiful. Great weather, bountiful lands, and an incredibly relaxed (to a fault) and friendly people. Even as a fool you could live off the land here without a concern in the world. The equator, in terms of basic human needs, is practically a utopia. By contrast in less hospitable areas, particularly those further off the equator, if you don't build, prepare, and maintain the rather complex systems required for just basic survival - you die. One group had a selector for high IQ, the other did not. One group is now disproportionately prosperous, the other group remains disproportionately in poverty.
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Back to IQ and children. When you're young environment plays quite a large role in IQ and general intelligence. However, as you age your IQ trends towards that 80% regardless of gains or losses during childhood. So for instance during the Minnesota adoption study you can see that every single adopted child's IQ dropped from age 7 to age 17. The reason for that is that the children were raised in privileged households where they environmental life was much higher than normal. And so this bumped up their measured results. But as the children aged into adolescence and adulthood - their IQ's regressed mostly down to their genetic components. By contrast you'd see the exact opposite for those who came from poor upbringings. Environmental factors would result in a disproportionately low IQ when they were young, but this would gradually increase as they aged.