Tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data about taxpayers with Meta

Re:Tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data ab... by cduzz on Thursday July 13, 2023 @11:13AM (#36710508)

"It's an algorithm! Nobody knows how or what went into creating it!" Seems like the new version of "I'm in charge of making the rockets go up; where they come down is a different department."

Meaning, of course, people are in charge of the machine learning / algorithm, people manage the weights, they measure the outcomes, they exercise editorial control. It's not a mystical black box given to us by god or a super advanced alien race; it's people doing people things; if they get the profit they also get the liability / responsibility. Even if they're not sure how it works, they sure as hell still responsible for it.

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Re:Tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data ab... by davrosthedalek on Thursday July 13, 2023 @12:05PM (#36711479)

I am not arguing against them having responsibility. They do. I am arguing that they might not have realized what the weights are doing. Because, yes, indeed, large neural networks ARE black boxes.

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Re:Tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data ab... by emodendroket on Thursday July 13, 2023 @04:59PM (#36715897)

I am not sure how it would be workable for Facebook to be responsible for what information third parties choose to put into their tool. By that logic pretty much any application that allows users to upload text is equally guilty unless each post in manually reviewed.

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