This is why I dread the incipient new world.
“If you take two people with the same job and circumstances, like whether they have kids, five years later the one who had the higher G.P.A. is more likely to pay a debt,” said Paul Gu, Upstart’s co-founder and head of product. “It’s not whether you can pay. It’s a question of how important you see your obligation.”
That is most likely strictly true; however, there are usually good reasons people have lower GPAs. They have less money and therefore have to work more and study less. They have other commitments such as a sick family member. They themselves have a chronic illness. Etc.
The practice of using algorithms that “judge” people’s character is absolutely no different at all in any way than phrenology and physiognomy. This is witchcraft via Big Data, an incantation uttered over a steaming data cauldron out of which emanates some predetermined expulsion of pseudo-truth and faux-insight.
Even if — and that is a big if as I don’t believe most of their data and am quite sure they don’t understand it themselves — these techniques work, is this ever-increasing surveillance how we wish to proceed as a society? Is it really what is best for everyone?
For engineeritis infectees like Chu, it doesn’t matter. It’s what he thinks the data is telling him, never mind if he should even be asking such degrading questions, or allowed to even possess such information in the first place.
This sort of thing will also soon be used in employment background checks too, I have no doubt at all.
Then there’s those of us who simply took no interest in Mickey Mouse courses. And even better yet, folkx such as yourself who couldn’t find anything challenging enough in the college catalog.
You can bet your bottom dollar it can be used in employment screening, and not just in the jobs such as accounting or cashiering that in theory have a legitimate interest in credit history (which in practice is used on most applicants for most jobs, at least on the “signing your rights away” boilerplate). I have a pet theory that the real reason employers want credit history has little to do with paying bills on time as a proxy for responsible behavior and much to do with willingness to take on debt. I’m thinking On the Waterfront, in which the union hall (which chooses who works on a given day) is in cahoots with the loan sharking racket, so the rule is “no loan, no job.” Have you ever heard the saying “bad credit is better than no credit”? Granted, OTW is fiction and BCIBTNC is urban legend, but you gotta admit there’s a plausible motive…
I have wondered in the past if companies reject candidates after running a credit check that turns up no debt, as they are not as easily beholden/controlled as those with heavy debt but who still pay their bills.
Hard to discover as no company would ever reveal that, and instead would claim they dismissed a candidate as they were not the “right fit,” but I would not at all be surprised if that happens these days.
A similar reason to this is why most companies opposed the ACA despite it mostly benefiting them — it had the strong possibility of severing health insurance from employment, and thus effectively eliminating one large reason many employees stick around and stay meek and obsequious.