SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard about a story that appeared on CNN on September 9, 2016.
From targeted advertising and insurance to education and policing, Cathy O'Neil's new book 'Weapons of Math Destruction' [WMD] looks at how algorithms and big data are targeting the poor, reinforcing racism and amplifying inequality.
[...] In a vacuum, these models are bad enough, but O'Neil emphasizes, "they're feeding on each other." Education, job prospects, debt and incarceration are all connected, and the way big data is used makes them more inclined to stay that way.
"Poor people are more likely to have bad credit and live in high-crime neighborhoods, surrounded by other poor people," she writes. "Once ... WMDs digest that data, it showers them with subprime loans or for-profit schools. It sends more police to arrest them and when they're convicted it sentences them to longer terms."
In turn, a new set of WMDs uses this data to charge higher rates for mortgages, loans and insurance.
[...] "Big Data processes codify the past," O'Neil writes. "They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that's something only humans can provide."
I'm not interested in the story. I'm interested in what it says about once proud CNN's current quality of journalism. Fox News: Left Division?
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/06/technology/weapons-of-math-destruction/
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Monday October 03 2016, @04:01AM
There are a LOT of barriers in front of anyone who wants to become a doctor. I don't think playing the race card due to affirmative action is an accurate portrayal of reality. Even if a person gets into a school because they are a minority doesn't mean they are a worse doctor. They still have to pass med-school and there is nothing in affirmative action that makes a professor be lenient on a minority student.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday October 03 2016, @06:36AM
They still have to pass med-school [...]
That is what I was hinting at. Too oblique?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @04:09PM
Ya, for those of us not knowing enough info off the cuff during an Interneconversation, yes always include a direct reference. Too easy to write off comments.