Yes, but criminal intent is less clear. Someone can be declared at fault for hitting a pedestrian, yet not have been criminally negligent. And even if this happens a few times from really bad luck, it's reasonable that they'd get to keep their license [0].
> You can be 100% race blind and have the best intentions in the world ... bias due to the nature of the data
The question is what data? Are you feeding things in that have a clear causal relationship with your desired result? Or are you inputting everything you can hoping to discover correlations ? The latter is essentially trying to suss out informal groups, and engaging in any group-based discrimination means you cannot claim to have "the best intentions" - regardless of whether the group can be named as a legally protected one or not. If say you're try to base mortgage underwriting on credit card purchase data, it's wholly disingenuous to claim that the resulting fallout is "accidental".
[0] In a society where cars are de facto mandatory to get around. I will disclaim that this casual attitude is a large part of what keeps roads so hostile for everyone else, but it currently is what it is. Also historically we haven't had such a likely hidden factor as phone use.
Yes, but criminal intent is less clear. Someone can be declared at fault for hitting a pedestrian, yet not have been criminally negligent. And even if this happens a few times from really bad luck, it's reasonable that they'd get to keep their license [0].
> You can be 100% race blind and have the best intentions in the world ... bias due to the nature of the data
The question is what data? Are you feeding things in that have a clear causal relationship with your desired result? Or are you inputting everything you can hoping to discover correlations ? The latter is essentially trying to suss out informal groups, and engaging in any group-based discrimination means you cannot claim to have "the best intentions" - regardless of whether the group can be named as a legally protected one or not. If say you're try to base mortgage underwriting on credit card purchase data, it's wholly disingenuous to claim that the resulting fallout is "accidental".
[0] In a society where cars are de facto mandatory to get around. I will disclaim that this casual attitude is a large part of what keeps roads so hostile for everyone else, but it currently is what it is. Also historically we haven't had such a likely hidden factor as phone use.