TILEC Club IO: Madina Kurmangaliyeva
10:45-11:45 ONLINE Meeting
Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans
There has been a growing interest in the use of algorithmic risk assessment tools in justice system.
Madina will present two papers on the topic:
- "Human Decisions and Machine Predictions" by Kleinberg et al. (2017, QJE) and
- "Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans" by Doleac & Stevenson (2019, IZA discussion paper)
The first paper is optimistic and shows that algorithmic tools can, in theory, improve over the decisions of some judges when the aim is the reduction in recidivism rate. The second paper is an empricial assessment of the effect of algorthmic assessment tools on the decisions of judges and portrays a much more cautionary tale. It finds that the algorithmic tools impact the decisions of judges but there is no evidence that it "led to a decline in recidivism, and, over time, judges appeared to use the risk scores less". "In the context of contentious public discussions about algorithms, ...[this paper] ... highlight[s] the importance of thinking about how man and machine interact.”
* please contact TILEC if you wish to join in the online presentation.