247. Automated Welfare – the Simple Violence of Complex Machines
This Machine Kills
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The Complexity of a Gradient Boosting Machine
The Rotterdam system is called gradient boosting machine. It relies on essentially a bunch of decision trees, right? Like, you know, these really complex mathematics to uncover patterns, hidden patterns across large amounts of data. And in the case of Rotterdam's algorithm, it's 500 decision trees. These trees categorize individuals based on a series of yes, no questions. At each question, a person can travel down the left or right branch until they reach the bottom of the tree with no questions left. The decision tree gives the person a value and that represents their risk score.
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