Tyranny of the Algorithm?

The Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at New York University Law School held a two-day conference exploring predictive analytics and human rights. HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball and lead statistician Kristian Lum spoke about Data Hygiene and Algorithmic Oversight. “Data-driven risk assessments raise difficult issues of oversight, since they rely on data sets and algorithms that may be hidden, opaque, or misunderstood by the general public.  Many of the actors who usually play a role in the detection of human rights violations by governments do not have the technical expertise to understand, let alone challenge, the quality of the data and fairness of the algorithms behind data-driven risk assessments.”