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Weapons of Math Destruction

How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
Jul 31, 2017ScienceMommy rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
OMG! . The author is cogent, extremely engaging and writes in a way that draws you in and makes continuing on effortless...as she educates you about what is going on and gives real life examples of how critical things get delegated to computers and algorithms -- but often have unintended consequences -- that are unjust and or cause very real harms to real people. But as any of you know -- actually finding and being able to engage a REAL person at some company or government agency can be difficult -- and then when you finally do, the odds are -- they don't have the power or ability to do anything about it. Whether its about credit, health care, the Affordable Care Act, being hired for a job, increasingly rigid algorithms based upon, "proxy" (something picked to approximate something that might be hard to assess or measure --- and therefore WRONG!) are determining outcomes -- and we never know, let alone have any ability to challenge these decisions. What's worse -- is the errors serve to reinforce and exacerbate already existing injustices in our society (like race and other forms of systemic privilege) They used to say, "You can't fight city hall..." But that was child's play compared to trying to fight an algorithm -- even worse, most of the time, you will never know that your bad fortune was in fact CAUSED by an unjust algorithm. . Read this book -- along with, "The New Jim Crow" and you will really have a much better understanding of the challenges that if not addressed threaten to unravel quality of life in the US for everyone.