ACM

Communications of the ACM

Home/Magazine Archive/February 1989 (Vol. 32, No. 2)/Can computers cope with human races?/Abstract

Can computers cope with human races?

By L. Earnest
Communications of the ACM, February 1989, Vol. 32 No. 2, Pages 173-182
10.1145/63342.63343
Comments

View as: Print Mobile App ACM Digital Library Full Text (PDF) Share:

In trying to apply a computer to a task that humans do, we often discover that it doesn't work. One common problem is that humans are able to deal with fuzzy concepts, but computers are not—they need precise representations and it is hard to represent a fuzzy concept in a precise way. However, if we look closer at such tasks, we often discover that the weakness actually lies not in the computer but in ourselves—that we didn't understand what we were doing in the first place. When faced with a problem of this sort, some people refuse to recognize the conceptual failure. Instead of seeking a better representation for the task, they thrash away at making the fuzzy scheme work, insisting that there is nothing wrong with the conceptual base. I will illustrate one such problem with a true story. The central theme is the fuzzy concept of racial and ethnic classification, as used by the U.S. government and a horde of other bureaucracies. These organizations have been carrying out elaborate statistical computations and making major policy decisions based on this concept for many years with problematical results. I begin with my first encounter with this scheme, some 25 years ago.

The full text of this article is premium content

No entries found

Log in to Read the Full Article

Sign In

Sign in using your ACM Web Account username and password to access premium content if you are an ACM member, Communications subscriber or Digital Library subscriber.

Need Access?

Please select one of the options below for access to premium content and features.

Create a Web Account

If you are already an ACM member, Communications subscriber, or Digital Library subscriber, please set up a web account to access premium content on this site.

Join the ACM

Become a member to take full advantage of ACM's outstanding computing information resources, networking opportunities, and other benefits.

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM Magazine

Get full access to 50+ years of CACM content and receive the print version of the magazine monthly.

Purchase the Article

Non-members can purchase this article or a copy of the magazine in which it appears.