Sexually Biased Apple Credit Cards?

Peter_Brosdahl

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is now under investigation from the New York Department of Financial Services due reports that Apple Credit service may be using algorithms that might be exhibiting sexual bias against women. Apple’s co-founder has even chimed in on this. The tweet below is a conversation between Mr. Wozniak and David Hanson whom shared that he and his wife had a similar experience with David getting nearly 20x the credit limit of his wife. This despite the fact they file taxes jointly and live in a state where all assets are shared as reported by CBS News. Steve had stated the he received nearly 10x that of his wife even though they share all assets and accounts.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1193422616016519168

Apple launched it’s credit card back in August with Goldman Sachs. According to BBC News it is Goldman Sachs first credit card. Many sure to pay close attention as New York’s investigation into this
 
Is gender part of the application?
Im having a hard time thinking this is anything other than happenstance.
 
Uvilla said:
Is gender part of the application?
Im having a hard time thinking this is anything other than happenstance.
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Besides the name on the application if they have access to other information regarding spending it should be relatively easy to confirm gender.
 
They've said gender isn't asked for but c'mon, you have to give a ss number, right? How could they not know?
 
I would guess she doesn't make as much money in her job, if she even has a job, so she gets less credit.
 
Zarathustra said:
Or even a name should do it in most cases :p
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Usually, but there are a few gender neutral names. Still, they have enough info to know without having to ask. Sounds like a throw away comment just to bide time until they figure out what's up with their algo.
 
I understand it would be easy.. it just doesn't make a lick of sense to include in the decision matrix.
Well , my real opnion is that this algorithm bullshit is just that. Im sure a simple algorithm that takes into account a few relevant pieces of information, would work as well as any complex pos they might have come up with.
 
Uvilla said:
I understand it would be easy.. it just doesn't make a lick of sense to include in the decision matrix.
Well , my real opnion is that this algorithm bullshit is just that. Im sure a simple algorithm that takes into account a few relevant pieces of information, would work as well as any complex pos they might have come up with.
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Well this is the exactly the problem.

There is no human defined decision matrix these days, it's all black box models.

You feed the machine learning algorithm past data on default rates, etc. and information about the users and let it try to draw it's own conclusions.

There was a black box algorithm being developed to screen for pneumonia a while back. It got some strange results, and in the bed it was determined that it was factoring in the model of x-ray machine into the decision, because apparently pneuomina rates were higher in third world countries, and they tended to have older x-ray machines.

Can't trust black box models. They draw some crazy conclusions sometimes
 
Seems most of the cases stem from married couples filing jointly.. wouldn't be surprised if that's a factor. Like it's looking at total credit to the household or something, and the first member gets all the credit, and that's counting against the second member.

I'm wondering if Apple has any liability here, they seem to be putting everything back onto Goldman.
 
According to the husband, his wife had a higher credit score than he did. Anyway, it should be interesting to hear what the cause of this mess was since it lets us know 1. the tech clearly has limits to what it can do, 2. Apple/GS issues a lame reason which only furthers distrust of both, or 3. Both 1 and 2 are correct.
 
Zarathustra said:
Or even a name should do it in most cases :p
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I've worked in government which means I've dealt with thousands upon thousands of people directly. You would be very surprised at how many neutral names there are, the number of people with names which are traditionally used for one sex but given to the other as well as the number of names which are just way out there.

Anyway, I suspect it's doing this because in most cases the women are going to take their husband's cards anyway and charge them up. Sure, it may be the same account but since it was all put on his cards she'll probably be able to avoid paying the bills when they get divorced.
 
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