Sorry, you said earlier that you were someone who understood computers well enough to know that you would never want one to replace human judgment in matters of justice. I thought you'd be interested in knowing that computation (delegated to machines for efficiency and consistency) is actually part of the justice system. The Bureau of Prisons has a department that is named, "Designation and Sentence Computation Center".
Maybe they don't actually use physical computers to perform the computation (though that'd be a bit weird if they didn't), but I think that's an irrelevant implementation detail as the Supreme Court has upheld the use of an unyielding mathematical formula to determine the length of a prisoner's sentence:
Hmm, well, IMHO that's all bad too. Not sure what, if anything, to do about it.
This doesn't seem as bad as the OP, but it's still an abdication of responsibility. Automated authority.
Let me point out something: why are these systems being deployed to decide sentencing, as opposed to trying to figure out what will actually affect recidivism?
I haven't read about that in any of the articles on this: is anyone paying attention to e.g. whether a given sentencing policy is actually reducing crime?
I don't doubt that machines can help us understand and manage ourselves and our complex society, but this seems like machine-worship to reinforce our atavistic ideas around crime and punishment.
Maybe they don't actually use physical computers to perform the computation (though that'd be a bit weird if they didn't), but I think that's an irrelevant implementation detail as the Supreme Court has upheld the use of an unyielding mathematical formula to determine the length of a prisoner's sentence:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/09-5201.pdf
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/09-5201.ZD.html