Incident 135: UT Austin GRADE Algorithm Allegedly Reinforced Historical Inequalities

Description: The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Computer Science's assistive algorithm to assess PhD applicants "GRADE" raised concerns among faculty about worsening historical inequalities for marginalized candidates, prompting its suspension.

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Incident Stats

Incident ID
135
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2012-12-01
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Uni revealed it killed off its PhD-applicant screening AI – just as its inventors gave a lecture about the tech
theregister.com · 2020

A university announced it had ditched its machine-learning tool, used to filter thousands of PhD applications, right as the software's creators were giving a talk about the code and drawing public criticism.

The GRADE algorithm was develope…

The Death and Life of an Admissions Algorithm
insidehighered.com · 2020

U of Texas at Austin has stopped using a machine-learning system to evaluate applicants for its Ph.D. in computer science. Critics say the system exacerbates existing inequality in the field.

In 2013, the University of Texas at Austin’s com…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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