Submitted by izumi3682 t3_xxelcu in Futurology
austacious t1_ircb1ny wrote
Reply to comment by Few_Carpenter_9185 in White House Releases Blueprint for Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights by izumi3682
The issue with this is that removing bias based on demographics necessitates harming other demographics. Say you have a hospital whos patient demographics are 80% over the age of 65, 20% under the age of 65 (Substitute in whatever more controversial group identites you'd like). Any model will be biased and overperform on the group over 65 comparatively, there is just more data to learn from for that demographic. If you oversample data from the younger population to try to equalize outcomes between demographics, then you're training distribution will no longer be identically distributed with your testing distribution. While the model performance will improve for patients in the less represented demographics, overall performance will necessarilly decrease. Overall more people will be harmed because of the decreased efficacy of the model, but the members of one demographic in particular will not be disproportionately harmed.
It's a question of ethics. The utilitarian would say to keep train/test distributions i.i.d. no matter what, blind to demographics. At the same time, nobody should receive subpar care due to their race, age, whatever group you associate with.
Few_Carpenter_9185 t1_ircnx3s wrote
Really good points.
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