Big Data and the Reference Class Problem. What Can We Legitimately Infer about Individuals?

Catherine Greene
Big data increasingly enables prediction of the behaviour and characteristics of individuals. This is ethically concerning on privacy grounds. However, this article discusses other reasons for concern. These predictions usually rely on generalisations about what certain sorts of people tend to do. Generalisations of this sort are often under scrutiny in legal cases, where, for example, lawyers argue that people with prior convictions are more likely to be guilty of the crime they are currently...

Registration Year

  • 2019
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Resource Types

  • Text
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Affiliations

  • London School of Economics and Political Science
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