[SydPhil] Brian Hedden next week (ie the last week of semester break)

[David Braddon-Mitchell]

HI All

Seminars start a week early this semester!
(But we’ll have a week off in week 1 to make up for it)

This coming Wed 29 July at 3.30 in the seminar room we have Brian Hedden (yes once was our Brian) form MIT

Algorithmic Monoculture

Algorithmic decision-making is replacing idiosyncratic human judgment in domains such as hiring, lending, and college admissions. Several philosophers, legal scholars, and computer scientists have warned that this trend might result in algorithmic monoculture, in which all decisions across a domain (all hiring in a given sector, say) are made by a single algorithm. They warn of the rise of "algorithmic leviathans" and "outcome homogenization," which may "institutionalize systemic exclusion and reinscribe social hierarchy." I argue that their concerns are largely misplaced. I consider four objections to monoculture, having to do with systematic exclusion, information aggregation, exploration of unfamiliar types of candidates, and Goodhart's law, and find them unpersuasive. Depending on the nature of its lone algorithm, monoculture can perform as well or better than polyculture.




See you there!

Best
David BM