Machine Learning Deployed to Help EEOC Predict Discrimination

In the not-so-distant future, machine learning may help civil-rights agencies predict who could face workplace discrimination.

Samuel Christopher Haffer, the first chief data officer hired by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said his goal is to create a “distant early warning system,” examining things like “intersectionality,” or groups of similar qualities like race, gender, or ethnicity. Machine learning—the algorithmic study of past experiences to optimize, or predict, future experiences—will have a lot to do with that.

Hypothetically, this could mean the agency would be able to flag a particular group of people in a specific industry who would be susceptible ...