Of course, one can argue all one wants with the author’s quadrants, but that’s just goofing around with semantics. The real core of the article is here:
”from personality tests that filter out qualified job applicants to crime risk algorithms that convince judges to issue longer sentences, automated algorithms are already replacing our most important human decision making processes. As I look around, I realize there is no need to imagine some hypothetical future of human suffering. We are already here. Data scientists are creating machines they do not fully understand, machines that separates winners from losers for reasons that are already very familiar to us: class, race, age, disability status, quality of education, and other demographic measures. It is a threat to the very concept of social mobility. [...] For the average person, it doesn’t really matter if the decision to keep them in wage slavery is made by a super-intelligent AI or the not-so-intelligent Starbucks Scheduling System. The algorithms that already charge people with low FICO scores more for insurance, or send black people to prison for longer, or send more police to already over-policed neighborhoods, with facial recognition cameras at every corner—all of these look like old fashioned power to the person who is being judged.”
And Scott Alexander, in his anger that the author sharply criticizes privileged, wealthy white males, fails to address this core issue at all. Technology only amplifies existing human systems and biases.