KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
ALGORITHMIC MONOCULTURE & THE AUTOMATION OF COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
Dr. Kathleen Creel, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science, Northeastern University
Joseph G. Astman Presidential Academic Symposium Scholar
As the number of college applications increase, admissions officers at some universities have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to help them make decisions faster, and perhaps better. Where once each school’s admissions officers did their own first rough cut of files, now algorithms from third party software providers sort applications for many institutions. But relying on the same AI systems means making the same mistakes and suffering from the same biases. Increasingly, algorithmic monoculture homogenizes the outcomes of consequential decisions such as college admissions, causing some individuals to be erroneously rejected everywhere. In this talk, I will argue that it is wrong to allow the quirks of an algorithmic system to consistently exclude a small number of people from consequential opportunities, and I will suggest solutions that can help ameliorate the harm to individuals.
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