Proxy Discrimination

The Apple Card Didn’t ‘See’ Gender—and That’s the Problem

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Author: Will Knight; Publisher: Wired; Publication Year: 2019. The following article touches on the idea of bias “proxies,” like address information as a proxy for race. It talks about how the Apple Card was offering lower credit limits for women compared to men even though gender was specifically excluded as a variable. The author argues that we should be including those specific variables so that the…

Discrimination by Proxy: How AI Uses Big Data to Discriminate

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Author: Jacob Ladd; Publisher: Michigan Technology Law Review; Publication Year: N/A. The following article discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) systems may be able to get past current discrimination laws through “proxy discrimination.” Proxy discrimination is the usage of a variable whose statistical significance for prediction derives from its correlation with membership in a suspect class. As an example, the article describes a hiring…