Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? No, the issue is what can be done about it and it is most likely going to take a big class action suit to even stand a crying chance to do anything about it. And where is anybody going to find a lawyer to do the suit?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? this is long winded and technical, but ithink some might find it interesting/up-setting: I'm a programmer / software engineer and here's my take on the so called FICO formula. They have none. It seems to me that what they are doing is the prime example of replacing traditional rules based expert systems to Artificial Neural Networks and fuzzy logic systems. In laymans terms, artificial intelligence. If one has experience in these sorts of systems, then all the crazy double speak, lack of answers, and just basic cryptic nature of the FICO scoring models makes complete sense. One can't explain the unexplainable, they can merely attempt to reverse engineer the results generated from the models and create a "best guess" answer to how it came to it's conclusion. All Fair-isaac's seemingly nonsensical talk and the CRA's evasive testimony to credit scoring is a text book example of a salesman trying to explain neural network systems without using the "AI" word and revealing the "secret". To me, this is scary. I don't like the idea at all that something which has such an impact in every americans life is some artifical intelligence based black box system. It's bad enought that insurance companies are using this sort of system more and more. Even worse - this is what all these new "national security" data mining systems would most likely use, as once again it's a "perfect" scenerio for a neural network implementation. It's neat/fun technology, but I think it's application should be limited to certain areas due to it's very nature.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? Your comments are well taken but when they have been sued over the issue they claim proprietary information and refuse to disclose how it works. And they get away with it. California has been leading the fight to make them disclose and has had some limited success but very limited.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? the bigger issue i think is that if this in fact a neural network, then there is no formula to disclose because these are self-learning programs. you basicly feed it data (a credit report for example) and the traget outcome (ie, these 10,000 reports were from consumers who defaulted w/in 12 months), and it figures out on it's own which factors to use, how they interact with each other, and how to weigh them. One can't really reverse engineer an a formula from it. I think if they can't explain the logic then it should not be allowed to be used in areas that have such a huge impact on citizens (whether its credit scoring, or law enforcement). Mark my words, some day they will have to defend a risk model that can't be defended because the logic can't be extracted. Do you think the general public would be happy to hear that their credit scores are calculated by a self-learning AI program whose logic can't be explained or defended? just somenthing to think about if one ever finds themself in court with these guys.. People who understand this technolgy (btw: it's used extensively in computer games) also undertsand it's short comings and could probably discredit credt scoring's underlying technology significantly in a court of law. One just has to get them to admit that's what they're using, which in itself isn't even close to being proprietary
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? Again outstanding thoughts well taken, but the bottom line is that it is still going to take one or more people wiling to go find a lawyer who has the ability to do something about it. Not a small task in itself in most cases.
