Cass Sunstein on Noise and nudges

Dialogues with Richard Reeves

If bail decisions were made by an Artificial Intelligence instead of judges, repeat crime rates among applicants could be cut by 25%. That is because an AI is consistent in its judgements: human judges are not.

This variation in in bail decisions, as well as in sentencing, and many medical diagnoses and underwriting decisions are all examples of what Cass Sunstein calls "Noise" - unwanted variation in professional judgement, which is the theme of his new book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, co authored with Danny Kahneman and Olivier Sibony. Professional judgement and discretion sound great in theory - especially to the professionals themselves - but in practice they end up creating a lottery in some high-stakes situations.

He tells me why there should be statues of the legal reformer Marvin Frankel all across the land; how we can reduce the "creep factor" of AI decision-making; how early movers influence opinion especially through social media, and much more.

Cass Sunstein

Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School, as well as the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He has written hundreds of articles and numerous books, ranging from constitutional law to Star Wars. He has also served in several government positions, formerly in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in Obama’s first administration and currently in the Department of Homeland Security to shape immigration laws. Sunstein’s influence is wide-reaching, most notably from his work on advancing the field of behavioral economics, making him one of the most frequently cited scholars. He is also a recipient of the Holberg Prize and has several appointments in global organizations, including the World Health Organization.

More from Cass Sunstein

• Read “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement” co-authored with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony
• Read his widely influential 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” co-authored with Richard Thaler, as well as his later book “Why Nudge? The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism”
• Dig into his work on “norm cascades”, as well as how group polarization works in jury pools
• Check out his previous work on jury behavior with Kahneman including “Assessing Punitive Damages” or “Are Juries Less Erratic than Individuals?”

Also mentioned

• Cass mentioned the 2007 asylum study by Schoenholtz, et al. titled “Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication”
• I referred to this NBER paper by Eren & Mocan showing that the behavior of judges can be influenced by arbitrary factors, including by the outcome of local sports games.
• Cass brought up the work of Sendhil Mullainathan, which includes a study on “Human Decisions and Machine Predictions” and another on “Who Is Tested for Heart Attack and Who Should Be”
• We discussed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 which imposed guidelines for criminal sentencing but was essentially dismantled in a 2004 Supreme Court ruling
• Learn more about the APGAR infant score
• Jim Surowiecki, the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds,” discusses the weight of the cow parable on an episode of Planet Money
• Yet the wisdom of crowds phenomenon is often diminished when the group discusses their judgements and are exposed to social influence, as demonstrated by the study: “How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect”
• In 2006, Duncan Watts, along with two co-authors, explored how early downloads were instrumental in predicting popularity in their article “Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market”
• I quoted John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism, “Men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable”
• Cass referred to Mill’s harm principle, something he expands upon here.
• We also discussed Patrick Deneen’s book “Why Liberalism Failed”

The Dialogues Team

Creator: Richard Reeves

Research: Ashleigh Maciolek

Artwork: George Vaughan Thomas

Tech Support: Cameron Hauver-Reeves

Music: "Remember" by Bencoolen (thanks for the permission, guys!)