Biased algorithms are easier to fix

Sendhil Mullainathan in an excellent essay for the NYT:

Humans are inscrutable in a way that algorithms are not. Our explanations for our behavior are shifting and constructed after the fact. To measure racial discrimination by people, we must create controlled circumstances in the real world where only race differs. For an algorithm, we can create equally controlled just by feeding it the right data and observing its behavior.

Biased Algorithms Are Easier to Fix Than Biased People

This is a fascinating complement to the concern that deep learning algorithms are a black box and we do not understand how they work. Even so, they are much easier to study than humans. Algorithms are tractable in a way that humans are not.

At its core, this essay is an argument for AI regulation, and an argument that such regulation will actually work.