97 Things About Ethics Everyone in Data Science Should Know

Chapter 58. What Decisions Are You Making?

James Taylor

CEO, Decision Management Solutions

Data science is a means to an end—specifically, a means to improve decision making. If data science does not improve decision making, it has no value. As Goethe said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” It is not enough that we use data science to know something; we must act on what it tells us.

When it comes to ethics, this leads to the conclusion that it is not enough that data science is ethical; it must be used ethically also. The decisions we make with data science must be ethical. We must be clear about the moral principles that govern how we conduct our decision making.

Ensuring decisions are made ethically with data science has two elements. We must design our decision-making approaches to be ethical, and we must be able to demonstrate that any specific decision we have made was ethical.

Designing Ethical Decision-Making Systems

Most decisions that use data science are made repeatedly. Data science relies on having data about how decisions were made in the past, and this focuses it on high-volume, repeatable decisions about transactions or consumers. Should we pay this claim? Can this person have credit? What’s the right treatment for this patient? Is this person who they say they are? These day-to-day decisions are the prime use case for data ...