This is one of those cases where I find myself wanting the professor to first sit down and very precisely say what they think "non-discriminatory" would mean in this context. The devil is in the details. Just flinging around wild accusations of racism at Google, this company, and finally society as a whole, without giving any action items on how one would discharge the accusation of racism is just being mean, hitting people with a very big stick without giving them any chance to dodge.
(Perhaps she does somewhere, however, I will freely admit my Bayesian priors on that probability suggest it is not worth my time to try to find it.)
I'm not demanding this to the nth degree, obviously; I don't expect her to submit a working patch to Google's results engine. But what amounts to a vague wave in the direction that can't even be nailed beyond "society" is not helpful to anyone, just an incendiary attack.
Sweeney says there are essentially three possibilities. One is that www.instantcheckmate.com has set up the arrest-mentioning ads to be served up to black identifying names. Another is that Google has somehow biased its ad serving mechanism in this way.
A more insidious explanation is that society as a whole is to blame. If Google’s Adsense service learns which ad combinations are more effective, it would first serve the arrest-related ads to all names at random. But this would change if it were to discover that click-throughs are more likely when these ads are served against a black-identifying name. In other words, the results merely reflect the discriminatory pattern of clicks from ordinary people.
Keep in mind that the professor did not write this article, which buries her methods and conclusions. In her actual paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6822) she has possible solutions in the conclusions.
Suppose you'd never heard of this study, and some conservative institution announced a finding that names associated with males (Steve, Darnell) were more likely to bring up ads mentioning arrest records than names associated with females (Emily, Latisha). Suppose the paper announcing this discovery was full of terms like "discrimination" and "fairness," and speculated about who or what was to "blame" for treating men in this discriminatory way.
Would the politically enlightened consider this increased association of men with arrest records (vs women) to be unfair bias against men? Would there be a call for a followup to determine whether it was a biased algorithm, a discriminatory corporation, or our entire anti-male sexist society that was to blame? Might they shrug it off, placing most of the blame, not on the ad system, but on the statistical behavior of men themselves?
If there is, as I suspect, a similar "bias" against men in this ad system, then any discussion of how to "fix" it should not address the question of black/white names. It ought to deal with the larger question of what to do when the data show that the probability of X given name 'A' is greater than the probability of X given name 'B'.
Thank you for the link. The conclusions seem to me to be accurately relayed by the first article, and my priors were accurate. There is still not a statement that I see of what the desired outcome should be.
Let me go ahead and spell out what I mean. Should the Google search results give the exact same % of results for each race? Should it accurately reflect the % of searches? Should it accurately reflect the % of ads put in? (Those are all 3 very different things.) If so, should Google tweak the percentage of those ads? If so, in what manner? If a combination, which combination?
The implication in the conclusion is that first one, but in that case, why does that one override the others? Might in fact be racist to hide the incidence of these searches, based on race? A case could be made for that, after all.
These are rich and interesting questions, and it does not simply go without saying what the desired outcome is.
The null hypothesis is described at the beginning of page 4, under the heading 'problem statement': Our hypothesis: no difference exists in the delivery of ads suggestive of an arrest record responding to online searches of racially associated names. Then, when presented with evidence of a pattern to the contrary, examine the pattern’s credibility, likelihood and circumstances of occurring. This hypothesis is briefly restated in the conclusion.
Methods are spelled out beginning on page 10, observations and how they compare to specific expectations are spelled out beginning on page 20. I can only infer that you didn't bother to read the paper.
Oh rubbish. She's demonstrated the bias in ad delivery exists and is unlikely to be the result of chance, identified possible vectors, and observed that there's no way of knowing where the bias originates at present. The paper [1] is cautious and methodical.
It is you who is 'just flinging around wild accusations'. Read the paper and critique it on its merits, by all means. As it is, your little rant tells us far more about you than its subject.
> there's no way of knowing where the bias originates
Just off the top of my head, why not go make a Google Ads account and bid on keywords that sound like black names, and then bid on keywords that sound like white names (according to the professor's criteria)? Wouldn't the price differences show that there is greater demand for one set or another?
My hypothesis would be that the discrimination happening here is simply happening in the ad marketplace, and that while it may reveal something unpleasant about our culture which we would like to see changed, doesn't lend itself to prescriptive intervention-type remedies. I'd like to believe that it may only be revealing that when a bunch of white marketing guys buy adwords in bulk they aren't cognizant of their list of "common names" being essentially "white names," and the arrest record websites caught on to this fact first.
> Just flinging around wild accusations of racism at Google, this company, and finally society as a whole, without giving any action items on how one would discharge the accusation of racism is just being mean, hitting people with a very big stick without giving them any chance to dodge.
It should be dealt with rationally and clinically, with the idea that everyone is probably affected by it, and probably embodies some of it. Treating racism as something wrong is like treating lust as something wrong. It makes it impossible to talk about things that would be awkward to talk about even without such strong emotional reactions attached to them. Just as lust is simply a consequence of our biology, racism is an unfortunate consequence of our psychology and our history.
We are all creatures "of our time." Our only hope of transcending that is to admit of the possibility and freely question ourselves.
Yes, it's definitely way worse to be called racist (it's just being mean!) than to be a victim of racism.
She identifies possible mechanisms for the discrimination; presumably the desired remedy would differ based on which mechanism is actually responsible. This paper is step one: tell people who may not know that the discrimination is occurring.
Comments
This is one of those cases where I find myself wanting the professor to first sit down and very precisely say what they think "non-discriminatory" would mean in this context. The devil is in the details. Just flinging around wild accusations of racism at Google, this company, and finally society as a whole, without giving any action items on how one would discharge the accusation of racism is just being mean, hitting people with a very big stick without giving them any chance to dodge.
(Perhaps she does somewhere, however, I will freely admit my Bayesian priors on that probability suggest it is not worth my time to try to find it.)
I'm not demanding this to the nth degree, obviously; I don't expect her to submit a working patch to Google's results engine. But what amounts to a vague wave in the direction that can't even be nailed beyond "society" is not helpful to anyone, just an incendiary attack.
Sweeney says there are essentially three possibilities. One is that www.instantcheckmate.com has set up the arrest-mentioning ads to be served up to black identifying names. Another is that Google has somehow biased its ad serving mechanism in this way.
A more insidious explanation is that society as a whole is to blame. If Google’s Adsense service learns which ad combinations are more effective, it would first serve the arrest-related ads to all names at random. But this would change if it were to discover that click-throughs are more likely when these ads are served against a black-identifying name. In other words, the results merely reflect the discriminatory pattern of clicks from ordinary people.
Keep in mind that the professor did not write this article, which buries her methods and conclusions. In her actual paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6822) she has possible solutions in the conclusions.
Suppose you'd never heard of this study, and some conservative institution announced a finding that names associated with males (Steve, Darnell) were more likely to bring up ads mentioning arrest records than names associated with females (Emily, Latisha). Suppose the paper announcing this discovery was full of terms like "discrimination" and "fairness," and speculated about who or what was to "blame" for treating men in this discriminatory way.
Would the politically enlightened consider this increased association of men with arrest records (vs women) to be unfair bias against men? Would there be a call for a followup to determine whether it was a biased algorithm, a discriminatory corporation, or our entire anti-male sexist society that was to blame? Might they shrug it off, placing most of the blame, not on the ad system, but on the statistical behavior of men themselves?
If there is, as I suspect, a similar "bias" against men in this ad system, then any discussion of how to "fix" it should not address the question of black/white names. It ought to deal with the larger question of what to do when the data show that the probability of X given name 'A' is greater than the probability of X given name 'B'.
Thank you for the link. The conclusions seem to me to be accurately relayed by the first article, and my priors were accurate. There is still not a statement that I see of what the desired outcome should be.
Let me go ahead and spell out what I mean. Should the Google search results give the exact same % of results for each race? Should it accurately reflect the % of searches? Should it accurately reflect the % of ads put in? (Those are all 3 very different things.) If so, should Google tweak the percentage of those ads? If so, in what manner? If a combination, which combination?
The implication in the conclusion is that first one, but in that case, why does that one override the others? Might in fact be racist to hide the incidence of these searches, based on race? A case could be made for that, after all.
These are rich and interesting questions, and it does not simply go without saying what the desired outcome is.
The null hypothesis is described at the beginning of page 4, under the heading 'problem statement': Our hypothesis: no difference exists in the delivery of ads suggestive of an arrest record responding to online searches of racially associated names. Then, when presented with evidence of a pattern to the contrary, examine the pattern’s credibility, likelihood and circumstances of occurring. This hypothesis is briefly restated in the conclusion.
Methods are spelled out beginning on page 10, observations and how they compare to specific expectations are spelled out beginning on page 20. I can only infer that you didn't bother to read the paper.
So you're saying that because there isn't a known solution, yet, it isn't useful to point out the problem.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
Oh rubbish. She's demonstrated the bias in ad delivery exists and is unlikely to be the result of chance, identified possible vectors, and observed that there's no way of knowing where the bias originates at present. The paper [1] is cautious and methodical.
It is you who is 'just flinging around wild accusations'. Read the paper and critique it on its merits, by all means. As it is, your little rant tells us far more about you than its subject.
1. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.6822.pdf
Asking for a coherent definition of racism in an academic paper is (presumably you are attempting to insinuate) racist. Natch.
The intro handwaves a very general definition, but never brings it back to the question at hand.
I don't think you're racist. I think you're relying on a lazy assumption that social scientists don't understand statistics.
> there's no way of knowing where the bias originates
Just off the top of my head, why not go make a Google Ads account and bid on keywords that sound like black names, and then bid on keywords that sound like white names (according to the professor's criteria)? Wouldn't the price differences show that there is greater demand for one set or another?
My hypothesis would be that the discrimination happening here is simply happening in the ad marketplace, and that while it may reveal something unpleasant about our culture which we would like to see changed, doesn't lend itself to prescriptive intervention-type remedies. I'd like to believe that it may only be revealing that when a bunch of white marketing guys buy adwords in bulk they aren't cognizant of their list of "common names" being essentially "white names," and the arrest record websites caught on to this fact first.
It's like that scene in Star Wars where Luke asks Yoda what's in the cave, and Yoda says, only what you bring with you.
> Just flinging around wild accusations of racism at Google, this company, and finally society as a whole, without giving any action items on how one would discharge the accusation of racism is just being mean, hitting people with a very big stick without giving them any chance to dodge.
Treating racism as a akin to a charge of wrongdoing is counter-productive. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5166776
It should be dealt with rationally and clinically, with the idea that everyone is probably affected by it, and probably embodies some of it. Treating racism as something wrong is like treating lust as something wrong. It makes it impossible to talk about things that would be awkward to talk about even without such strong emotional reactions attached to them. Just as lust is simply a consequence of our biology, racism is an unfortunate consequence of our psychology and our history.
We are all creatures "of our time." Our only hope of transcending that is to admit of the possibility and freely question ourselves.
Yes, it's definitely way worse to be called racist (it's just being mean!) than to be a victim of racism.
She identifies possible mechanisms for the discrimination; presumably the desired remedy would differ based on which mechanism is actually responsible. This paper is step one: tell people who may not know that the discrimination is occurring.
... hitting people with a very big stick without giving them any chance to dodge.
Isn't that part of the strategy?
It isn't even that. If you read the actual paper, she leaves open the possibility that it's just Google's algorithms reflecting society's bias.
Hitting people with an inflammatory stick would be calling out a smoke-filled racist room in the Googleplex; she doesn't do that.