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Re:The stockmarket is now run by computers, algorithms and p... by mattkrause on Monday October 14, 2019 @09:36PM (#21254790)
Set your spouse’s alarm clock for 4 am. When it goes off, calm them down by pointing out that while you set it and you turned the volume up to 11, it wasn’t your decision to disrupt their sleep; they should blame the timer inside instead. Let me know how the couch feels afterward.

Seriously, the responsibility lies with whomever made—or okayed—-the system. One-off things, especially if they are hard to foresee, might get a partial pass. Otherwise you ought to be carefully testing and evaluating your own system instead of blaming gradient descent.

Re:The stockmarket is now run by computers, algorithms and p... by MadWombat on Tuesday October 15, 2019 @03:29PM (#21262661)
> the responsibility lies with whomever made—or okayed—-the system

And generally speaking these are very different people, but that is besides the point. I am still unsure why we are talking about testing and evaluating, as if we are only talking about failure cases.

If I set the alarm clock for 7AM and it starts ringing at 4AM, the fault is with the clock designer. But if I set it for 4AM and it starts ringing at 4AM, it is somewhat silly of me to start blaming the clock designer for my disrupted sleep, isn't it?

And we are not talking alarm clocks, we are talking about systems that make complex decisions based on hugely multidimensional data. Decisions that we provably cannot explain. There is no amount of testing and evaluation that can ensure that these systems are error free. But when they work, they do work well and provide a competitive edge over human analysts.