A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling—a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality.
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O’Neil reveals in this shocking book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can’t get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his race or neighborhood), he’s then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a “toxic cocktail for democracy.” Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.
Tracing the arc of a person’s life, from college to retirement, O’Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. Models that score teachers and students, sort resumes, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole, and monitor our health—all have pernicious feedback loops. They don’t simply describe reality, as proponents claim, they change reality, by expanding or limiting the opportunities people have. O’Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for how their algorithms are being used. But in the end, it’s up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change.
Catherine ("Cathy") Helen O'Neil is an American mathematician and the author of the blog mathbabe.org and several books on data science, including Weapons of Math Destruction. She was the former Director of the Lede Program in Data Practices at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Tow Center and was employed as Data Science Consultant at Johnson Research Labs.
She lives in New York City and is active in the Occupy movement.
感谢 recall 这本书的不知名同学,谢谢你逼得我用4个小时读完。 作者创造了“数学杀伤性武器”(Weapons of Math Destruction, WMD)这个词指代统计模型,探讨现实生活中统计模型的大规模应用对社会的影响。 正面例子是棒球、篮球比赛的分析,可以即时调整战术(参考《点球成金...
评分The answer is yes. A model, after all, is nothing more than an abstract representation of some process, be it a baseball game, an oil company’s supply chain, a foreign government’s actions, or a movie theater’s attendance. Whether it’s running in a comp...
评分 评分The answer is yes. A model, after all, is nothing more than an abstract representation of some process, be it a baseball game, an oil company’s supply chain, a foreign government’s actions, or a movie theater’s attendance. Whether it’s running in a comp...
各种案例堆积,看不下去。对每个模型bad feedback loop都分析了,但是alternative呢?transparency怎么做不够深入
评分太唠叨
评分羊烤这缠头不是早就黑过了蟆
评分大数据伦理讨论小合集。身在tech公司做大数据的东西,经常考虑这方面的东西。模型再好也难以100%正确,而那很小的一部分却的确能影响他们的生活。赞同作者的一些批评,但是并不能因噎废食。研究者更应该努力把模型做得更好(大部分批评都焦聚在feature selection不对,model不对之类的方面),因为相比起来,alternative更加不可取---信息太少纯粹靠拍脑袋做决定。另外,这名字起得太好了!!
评分一篇讨伐大数据的檄文。与那些赞歌不同,作者解释各行各业中所用的数学模型(以及人们应对这些模型的方法)背后所蕴藏的种种歧视、黑箱与不公。这些阴暗面加剧了当今社会的贫富差距和底层人民的愤怒,监管时不我待。
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