Nyssa Taylor, criminal justice policy counsel with the Philadelphia A.C.L.U., was among the protesters. Various algorithms embraced by the Philadelphia criminal justice system were designed by Richard Berk, a professor of criminology and statistics at Penn. And though he acknowledged that a layperson couldn’t easily understand the algorithm’s decisions, he said human judgment has the same problem. “All machine-learning algorithms are black boxes, but the human brain is also a black box,” Dr. Berk said. In an affidavit included with a lawsuit recently filed by the defender’s office, a former Philadelphia probation officer said the probation department’s predictive algorithm also affected arraignment hearings.

Source: New York Times February 06, 2020 16:41 UTC