Kosuke Imai (Workshop in Applied Statistics)

This Week's Speaker

Kosuke Imai (Department of Government), "Does AI help humans make better decisions? A methodological framework for experimental evaluation" (joint work with Eli Ben-Michael, D. James Greiner, Melody Huang, Zhichao Jiang, Sooahn Shin)

Abstract

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on data-driven algorithms has become ubiquitous in today's society. Yet, in many cases and especially when stakes are high, humans still make final decisions. The critical question, therefore, is whether AI helps humans make better decisions as compared to a human-alone or AI-alone system. We introduce a new methodological framework that can be used to answer experimentally this question with no additional assumptions. We measure a decision maker's ability to make correct decisions using standard classification metrics based on the baseline potential outcome. We consider a single-blinded experimental design, in which the provision of AI-generated recommendations is randomized across cases with a human making final decisions. Under this experimental design, we show how to compare the performance of three alternative decision-making systems--human-alone, human-with-AI, and AI-alone. We apply the proposed methodology to the data from our own randomized controlled trial of a pretrial risk assessment instrument. We find that AI recommendations do not improve the classification accuracy of a judge's decision to impose cash bail. Our analysis also shows that AI-alone decisions generally perform worse than human decisions with or without AI assistance. Finally, AI recommendations tend to impose cash bail on non-white arrestees more often than necessary when compared to white arrestees.

The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.

More information is available at the Gov 3009 website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009

All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.