Comment by topherhunt

Jeez this seems totally backwards to me. I'd rather live in a society where court records are as open and public as safely possible (like GP's vision) and we as a society adjust our norms such that it's assholish and discriminatory to pass over someone for hiring just because they shoplifted when they were 15.

There will for sure be major backlash against "permanent criminal" datasets (bringing up AI in this is a red herring, it's not fundamentally different from if someone were serving such a database using CGI scripts; AI just gives us more reach to do the things we were already committed to doing). But I frankly don't sympathize with the attitude that people should have the right to pretend that past decisions never happened. You also shouldn't be permanently _punished_ or _ostracized_ for your past self's decisions. But nor should you have the right to expect total anonymity / clean slate disconnected from your past self's decisions.

My probably unpopular view: The right direction is for us as a society to recognize and acknowledge that people change and _need to be allowed to change_ -- not take the easy hack of erasing history. The cost for larger-scale public transparency & institutional change efforts is just too high.