New York Times Bestseller '
Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year '
A manual for the 21st-century citizen...
This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change..
But in the end, it's up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives.
O'
Neil calls on modellers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use.
These "Weapons of Math destruction" score teachers and students, sort CVs, grant or deny loans, evaluate workers, target voters, and monitor our health.
Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'
Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society.
Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination.
The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and incontestable, even when they're wrong.
And yet, as Cathy O'
Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true.
In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated.
Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives - where we go to school, whether we get a loan, how much we pay for insurance - are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. accessible, refreshingly critical, relevant and urgent' - Federica Cocco, Financial Times A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life - and threaten to rip apart our social fabric We live in the age of the algorithm.
New York Times Bestseller '
Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year '
A manual for the 21st-century citizen..
