Weapons of Math Destruction

Excellent review of a lot of cases where big data is failing us right now. O'Neil terms them Weapons of Math Destruction, they are the algorithms and filters and data crunching methods that help people make decisions on who to hire, who to fire, who to give a loan to and how much to charge you. They are oversimplified, non-transparent and static, and they usually end up being feedback engines that help the rich get richer and discriminate against the poor. Not that humans before them weren't terribly biased and greedy in their decision making process, but now it happens on a larger scale without us necessarily noticing, because everyone trusts algorithms, because algorithms are fair, right?

Any decisions outsourced to big data will never be completely fair, the same way humans can never be completely fair. But raising awareness and having these discussions now is super important, so we learn how to finetune these tools so they'll be as fair and transparent as they can be.

O'Neil's chapter on micro-targeting of citizens with political ads on facebook is very on-point for these days.