FILE - Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., speaks during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Oct. 19, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Child welfare officials in Oregon will stop using an algorithm to help decide which families are investigated by social workers, opting instead for an entirely new process that officials said will make more racially equitable decisions.
From California to Colorado and Pennsylvania, as child welfare agencies use or consider implementing algorithms, an AP review identified concerns about transparency, reliability and racial disparities in the use of the technology, including their potential to harden bias in the child welfare system. Sunderland said Oregon child welfare officials had long been considering changing their investigations process before making the announcement last month.
But Oregon officials tweaked their original algorithm to only draw from internal child welfare data in calculating a family’s risk, and tried to deliberately address racial bias in its design with a “fairness correction.”
A child’s safety up to an algorithm? Insanity.