Rodrigo Ochigame, Actuarialism and Racial Capitalism (Ethics of AI)

The Centre for Ethics at the University of Torontois an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto

Rodrigo Ochigame (MIT) discusses "Actuarialism and Racial Capitalism" in our Ethics of AI in Context series.

Actuarialism and Racial CapitalismAs national and regional governments form expert commissions to regulate “automated decision-making,” a new corporate-sponsored field of research proposes to formalize the elusive ideal of “fairness” as a mathematical property of algorithms and especially of their outputs. Computer scientists, economists, lawyers, lobbyists, and policy reformers wish to hammer out, in advance or in place of regulation, algorithmic redefinitions of “fairness” and such legal categories as “discrimination,” “disparate impact,” and “equal opportunity.”But general aspirations to fair algorithms have a long history. This talk recounts some past attempts to answer questions of fairness through the use of algorithms. In particular, it focuses on “actuarial” practices of individualized risk classification in private insurance firms, consumer credit bureaus, and police departments since the late nineteenth century. The emerging debate on algorithmic fairness may be read as a response to the latest moral crisis of computationally managed racial capitalism.This is an online event. It will be live streamed on the Centre for Ethics <a href="http://youtube.com/c/CentreforEthics" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">YouTube Channel</a> on Tuesday, October 20. Channel subscribers will receive a notification at the start of the live stream. For other events in the series, and to subscribe, visit <a href="http://youtube.com/c/CentreforEthics" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">YouTube.com/c/CentreforEthics</a>. For information on the Centre for Ethics, including upcoming events, visit <a href="https://ethics.utoronto.ca" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">ethics.utoronto.ca</a>.Rodrigo OchigameHistory, Anthropology, &amp; Science, Technology, and SocietyMIT

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