Computers aren't just doing hard math problems and showing us cat videos. Increasingly, they judge our character. Maybe we should be grateful.
A company in Palo Alto, Calif., called Upstart has over the last 15 months lent $135 million to people with mostly negligible credit ratings. Typically, they are recent graduates without mortgages, car payments or credit card settlements.
Those are among the things that normally earn a good or bad credit score, but these people haven't been in the working world that long. So Upstart looks at their SAT scores, what colleges they attended, their majors and their grade-point averages. As much as job prospects, the company is assessing personality.
The idea, validated by data, is that people who did things like double-checking the homework or studying extra in case there was a pop quiz are thorough and likely to honor their debts.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/using-algorithms-to-determine-character/
[Other Companies Involved With Similar Programs]: ZestFinance , Workday
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 27 2015, @09:31PM
every transaction that takes place would involve debt at some stage
That is correct ALL do with the exception of weirdo stuff like escrow account transactions, for which you usually get to pay a fee.
Go ahead... try to explain non-garage sale level transaction that doesn't at some point involve showing up on someone's accounts receivable or accounts payable report at some level of the game, even if its a rather short period of time.
You could redefine the word debt to be "only house mortgages" but its going to confuse everyone else.