Posts tagged responsibility

When we open up data, are we empowering people to come together? Or to come apart? Who defines the values that we should be working towards? Who checks to make sure that our data projects are moving us towards those values? If we aren’t clear about what we want and the trade-offs that are involved, simply opening up data can — and often does — reify existing inequities and structural problems in society. Is that really what we’re aiming to do?

via https://points.datasociety.net/toward-accountability–6096e38878f0

“We should be cautious about putting too much faith or fear into elected officials […] At the end of the day, this is just a president. [….] If we want to have a better world we can’t hope for an Obama, and we should not fear a Donald Trump, rather we should build it ourselves.”

–Edward Snowden

Policy algorithms can cause real damage that is difficult to remedy under existing legal protections, especially when algorithms terminate basic services. If community members are unfairly stigmatized by police surveillance or incorrectly denied care for acute medical conditions, it is nearly impossible to make them whole after the fact. So how do we preserve fairness, due process, and equity in automated decision-making?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/04/the_dangers_of_letting_algorithms_enforce_policy.single.html