You can of course remove race and gender data from the algorithm as legally required. There are even more advanced methods to prevent it learning that information indirectly and average out its predictions.

But I don't really see the point. Men really are riskier drivers. They should pay more on insurance. In the US they do, and no one seems to care. Men, as a group, pay exactly the rate that matches their risk. Anything else would mean women subsidizing men and paying more then their actual risk.

I like this example because it's the reverse of the typical stereotype that women are terrible drivers. The algorithm doesn't care about stereotypes. And it's a small effect, something like 5%. Men aren't being banned from driving or ostracized from society, they just pay a bit more to make up for their higher risk. Other factors like age or previous accidenrs matter far more.

And as the insurance companies get better data, that proxy will matter less and less. In the future they will just offer to record your driving behaviour on a test track and statistically analyze how skilled you actually are, or something like that.

And anyway this has gotten far away from the point. If getting insurance required a human to interview you and judge your character, it would be 100 times worse. You think humans can be made blind to gender and race? When the choice is between a human and an algorithm, it's indefensible to choose the human.

Would you be as ok with it if the algorithm was charging black people more? Would you also reply "well, the data shows that black people claim more, so it's only fair - otherwise, white people are subsidizing black people driving"? At the end of the day, you have as much control over being a man as you do over being black, and are being penalized for the actions of others, that makes no sense.

>>When the choice is between a human and an algorithm, it's indefensible to choose the human.

That's where I vehemently disagree.

I don't see any reason to believe blacks are worse drivers than whites. Especially after taking other variables into account, like economic status.

If there even is an effect, just like your gender example, I doubt it would be large our align with our stereotypes. E.g. it could be the case that whites are 1% worse drivers. And yeah make them pay more, again as a group they aren't being treated unfairly and anything else would amount to subsidies to them from other groups. That's not fair either.

>being penalized for the actions of others,

This different way of viewing this situation is perhaps why we disagree. I don't see it as a "penalty". If you live in a wood house, you will pay more on fire insurance. You aren't being penalized, your house is just objectively riskier. People in stone houses shouldn't be forced to subsidise your extra risk.

If you banned discrimination and removed all female drivers from the planet, insurance rates would go up to match what they are for men now. Men now pay what they would if there were only men.

>That's where I vehemently disagree.

Yeah well that's not an argument. And you can't make me bite the racism bullet if you aren't even going to acknowledge how disgusting your alternative is. After all your system has far more racism because human judges are racist. And why should someone spend twice as long in prison or be unable to get a loan because they are less attractive?

Its algorithms or nothing. Humans are not even an option. And in many cases nothing isn't an option either.

>>After all your system has far more racism because human judges are racist. And why should someone spend twice as long in prison or be unable to get a loan because they are less attractive?

Because I don't think we can quantify the justice system. Like other commenters in this thread have pointed out - the jury system is explicitly based on the idea of being judged "by your peers", with all the biases and ideas that it brings with it. Could you replace that with an AI? Maybe - but how will you know if you reached the "correct" judgement then? In some bizzare scenario you might arrive at a situation where AI reaches a judgement that literally no one is happy with - and at that point we're just ruled by a hivemind overlord, no? I'm being sarcastic, but there is a point where we serve the algorithm and not the other way around. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would gladly submit to Culture-style Minds(Iain Banks) because I think they were being fair as described in fiction, but I have no trust that whatever we develop will be that fair, we seem to be using scattershot systems that look at the lowest common denominator and make a decision based on something that is easy and obvious, or worse, we train them on existing systems. Which(and I am sorry for bringing up the racism example again) - AI trained on the current population of the US prison system would conclude that it has to target certain groups more because...well, clearly they commit more crime! I have no trust it would be anything other than a shallow, simple-stat based oracle that everyone would listen to.

> Super simple example - you don't need AI to determine that men claim more frequently and more on car insurance than women. So....over the years, the rates for men have risen, until finally it was completely outlawed to take into account the sex of the applicant for car insurance quotes(at least here in the EU).

I believe that law should be repealed, because it would lead to fewer people dying on the roads. So there is a case where not everyone agrees the human touch is actually a good thing.

>>I believe that law should be repealed, because it would lead to fewer people dying on the roads

Citation needed.

Counter argument - vast majority of males in prison for murder in US are black. Therefore, if we stop anti-discrimination policies in US, that will lead to saving more lives. I mean, statistics don't lie!

Or, maybe, just maybe - the statistics omit a lot of data that would allow us to narrow down what makes men claim more and why there's so many black prisoners in the US?

And that brings us back to the original problem - AI can just come to a conclusion = charge men more for insurance = less accidents! Or....put more black people in prisons = less murders! And the results might be exactly what it expects, so of course it will be declared as a huge success - but it's everything but.

Do you think it should be legal for insurance companies to charge higher premiums to smokers? If so, then you agree it's okay to simply go by the statistics in some contexts, so the existence of some other contexts in which it's not, isn't a counterargument.

I think it really depends on what parameter(s) the AI is optimising for, or weighting the most. If it's efficiency or profit, there are tons of things that make sense financially, but would probably be considered unethical. E.g. we could encourage people to smoke, as it tends to lower the cost of healthcare overall (since they die younger / quicker, on average). That's just an example, the point is that I'm sure there are tons of "truths" from some perspective that an AI might employ, but we'd find unethical.