What HBR Gets Wrong About Algorithms and Bias · fast.ai

The Harvard Business Review recently published an article, Want Less-Biased Decisions? Miller acknowledges that critics of the "algorithmic revolution" are "concerned that algorithms are often opaque, biased, and unaccountable tools being wielded in the interests of institutional power", although he then focuses exclusively on the biased part for the remainder of the article, without addressing the opaque or unaccountable charges (as well as how these interact with bias). The media often frames advances in AI through a lens of humans vs. machines: who is the champion at X task. This framework is both inaccurate as to how most algorithms are used, as well as a very limited way to think about AI. In all cases, algorithms have a human component, in terms of who gathers the data (and what biases they have), which design decisions are made, how they are implemented, how results are used to make decisions, the understanding various stakeholders have of correct uses and limitations of the algorithm, and so on.