> At some point in the near future neural nets trained to predict human performance will undoubtedly condition on priors like nationality, race, and socioeconomic status, even indirectly if they are not explicit data points. What then? Will we continue to bend over backwards to deny reality in favor of a false Utopia? What happens when these trends suggest different interventions for medical conditions? Different learning environments? Different reactions to authority and punishment?

This doesn't feel like an argument in good faith because you both seem to already have strong beliefs about what the "actual causes" are, and also place a lot of words in the mouths of those who might disagree with you based on an uncharitable interpretation of their motives.

Consider how you lump in "nationality, race, and socioeconomic status" all of the same category. It seems you've already decided that those are all root causes, and anyone who disagrees is just denying reality.

One might say "I want to be able to identify interventions to counteract negative effects of [socioeconomic status, home life, etc] in a specific and personalized way to improve opportunities." That would be an interesting use of computational power, beyond what we could've accomplished without fancy computers.

Or you could design a model that would just mimic simple naive stats and reinforce your beliefs on race and culture, while not actually be digging into precise, specific, details. Yes, your simple model will label groups that have suffered historical and ongoing discrimination and disadvantages as less likely to succeed if you don't fully model the compounding and generational effects of that. That's neither interesting nor compelling. People are extremely complicated and yet you've concluded that it's all down to a few blunt factors. Ok.