Accountability sinks

Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink" from the other side of those constructing or overseeing systems.

Cathy argues that the use of algorithm in some contexts permits a new scale of harmful and unaccountable systems that ought to be reigned in.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241363/weapons-of-m...

It's much easier to hold an algorithm accountable than an organization of humans. You can reprogram an algorithm. But good look influencing an organization to change

That is not accountability. Can the algorithm be sent to jail if it commit crimes?

Is the point revenge or fixing the problem? Fixing the algorithm to never do that again is easy. Or is the point to instill fear?

The point of accountability is to deter harmful activity by ensuring actions/decisions somewhere result in consequences for who are responsible for them. Those consequences can be good or bad, though it is often used to refer to bad.

An algorithm has no concept of consequences (unless programmed to be aware of such), and the more plausibly whoever wrote it can deny knowledge of the resulting consequences, also the more whoever wrote it can avoid consequences/accountability themselves. After all, we can tell Soldiers or Clerks that ‘just following orders’ is no excuse. But computers don’t do anything but follow orders.

Most people/organizations/etc have strong incentives to be able to avoid negative consequences, regardless of their actions or the results of their actions.

Everyone around them has strong incentives to ensure negative consequences for actions with foreseeable negative outcomes are applied to them.

Sometimes, organizations and people will find a way for the consequences of their actions to be borne by other people that have no actual control or ability to change actions being performed (scapegoat). Accountability ideally should not refer to that situation, but sometimes is abused to mean that.

That tends to result in particularly nasty outcomes.

> The point of accountability is to deter harmful activity by ensuring actions/decisions somewhere result in consequences

What I read is yes, the point is revenge. If I can offer you a different way of preventing harmful activity, apparently you're not interested. There has to be some unpleasant consequences inflicted, you insist on it.

I think you should reconsider.