Value-laden Disciplinary Shifts in Machine Learning

Understand

As machine learning models are increasingly used for high-stakes decision making, scholars have sought to intervene to ensure that such models do not encode undesirable social and political values.

• However, little attention thus far has been given to how values influence the machine learning discipline as a whole.
• How do values influence what the discipline focuses on and the way it develops? If undesirable values are at play at the level of the discipline, then intervening on particular models will not suffice to address the problem.
• Instead, interventions at the disciplinary-level are required.