Why does ALEX ask about "sex assigned at birth"?
We completely understand and empathize with why this could be a difficult, and even frustrating, question for some folks to answer. Requiring all users to fit this choice into one of two options can feel limiting and/or marginalizing. However, ALEX interacts within the world of insurance, which still operates within unnecessary but unfortunately inescapable gender binaries and is important to our prediction models for 2 reasons:
"Sex at birth" is a key piece of demographic information for our model based on how insurance claims are currently structured. There is a wide range of common medical costs associated with each of the two options assigned at birth. This single piece of information has strong predictive power and sharing it drastically improves the accuracy and confidence in ALEX's claims-based predictions.
The underlying data set we use provides us with "Sex at Birth" specifically as a datapoint. We don't have information like Gender Identity in these anonymous claims, so we can't use that for our model. And for the sake of accuracy and out of respect for each individual using ALEX, we don't want to just equate sex assigned at birth with current gender expression.
It is also worth noting that a users' response to this question is completely anonymous. As this question is a vital element of how our prediction model works, we are unable to make adjustments to the wording and/or remove the question at this time. As soon as insurance provides alternatives to calculate predictions with the same accuracy as this question, we will immediately make those changes to improve the inclusivity of ALEX.
In the meantime, we can add a “Prefer not to say” answer option. With this option, ALEX will use average data claims for female individuals to make the most conservative recommendation—something we can note for users so they understand the impact on their estimates/recommendations when choosing “Prefer not to say.”
If you'd like to turn on the "prefer not to say" option, reach out to selfservicesupport@jellyvision.com for assistance.