Activity

[...] software engineers construct the datasets mined by scoring systems; they define the parameters of data-mining analyses; they create the clusters, links, and decision trees applied; they generate the predictive models applied. Human biases and values are embedded into each and every step of de…

[...] Runaway data can lead to cascading disadvantages as digital alchemy creates new analog realities. Once one piece of software has inferred that a person is a bad credit risk, a shirking worker, or a marginal consumer, that attribute may appear with decision-making clout in other systems all …

[...] Marketers plot to tout beauty products at moments of the day that women feel least attractive. There’s little to stop them from compiling digital dossiers of the vulnerabilities of each of us. In the hall of mirrors of online marketing, discrimination can easily masquerade as innovation.

[...] Companies were gathering millions of records from pharmacies. They then sold them on to insurers eager to gain a competitive advantage by avoiding people likely to incur high medical fees. Since 1 percent of patients account for over one-fifth of health care costs, and 5 percent account for n…

So why does this all matter? It matters because authority is increasingly expressed algorithmically. Decisions that used to be based on human reflection are now made automatically. [...]

[...] In their race for the most profitable methods of mapping social reality, the data scientists of Silicon…