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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: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 03 2016, @06:06AM
I'm pretty sure policemen are not (yet?) sent by big data algorithms, but by their bosses who are still biological beings. Also, I'm pretty sure that sentencing is still done by biological judges, not by computers.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @08:25AM
you're a little behind the times. No joke. I believe I've seen articles about convicts who got out early because of a "computer glitch" as well as people trying to appeal decisions (regarding parol maybe? I forget) that had been handed down by an algorithm. Police departments using some software hocus pocus to decide when and where they are going to patrol is also a thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday October 03 2016, @08:43AM
I'm pretty sure policemen are not (yet?) sent by big data algorithms, but by their bosses who are still biological beings.
And in a bunch of places, those bosses get their priorities from big data algorithms [wikipedia.org].
It's not widespread. Yet. But I expect it will be coming to a constabulary near you Real Soon Now™.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by nishi.b on Monday October 03 2016, @08:54AM