Forum 2: On Coding with Wisdom and Justice

Before class: Read On Coding with Wisdom and Justice.

In class: You’ll receive a paper with the discussion questions below. In small groups, talk through the questions, annotate the paper with your group’s thinking, and compare notes with another group. Before you leave, take a photo of your annotated paper (with everyone’s name on it) and upload it to Moodle.

Discussion Questions

1. The article opens with Indiana’s welfare system automatically denying over a million aid applications because the algorithm couldn’t handle context the way a human caseworker could. Where do you see if/else-style rules at work in that failure? What context might be hard to capture in a simple condition?
2. Michael Polanyi’s idea of tacit knowledge is that “we know more than we can tell.” Can you think of a decision you make in daily life that would be hard to write as a precise if statement, because so much of your judgment is intuitive?
3. Drawing on Wittgenstein, the author argues that “any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule” — meaning rules always need interpretation in context. As you write conditionals this week, where do you find yourself making a judgment call about what a condition “really” means?
4. The author suggests two questions programmers should ask about any algorithm: what context does this algorithm assume? and what conditions would break it? Pick an app or algorithm you use daily (a spam filter, a recommendation feed, a grade calculator) and try answering both.

Submission

Take a photo of your group’s annotated discussion paper — make sure every group member’s name is on it — and upload it to Moodle by the end of class.