Weapons of Math Destruction
- Author Cathy O'Neil
- Narrator Cathy O'Neil
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Run Time 6 hours and 23 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Algorithms and data structures, Econometrics and economic statistics, Impact of science and technology on society, Machine learning, Political ideologies and movements, Political structures: democracy, Popular science.
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
In this New York Times bestseller, Cathy O'Neil, one of the first champions of algorithmic accountability, 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. 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. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated.
And yet, as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and incontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination. 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. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort CVs, grant or deny loans, evaluate workers, target voters, and monitor our health.
O'Neil calls on modellers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. 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.
'A manual for the 21st-century citizen... accessible, refreshingly critical, relevant and urgent' - Financial Times
'Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year
© Cathy O'Neil 2016 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Critics Review
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Fascinating and deeply disturbing
Guardian Books of the Year -
This is a manual for the 21st-century citizen, and it succeeds where other big data accounts have failed – it is accessible, refreshingly critical and feels relevant and urgent
Financial Times -
Well-written, entertaining and very valuable
Times Higher Education -
O’Neil has become a whistle-blower for the world of Big Data… Her work makes particularly disturbing points about how being on the wrong side of an algorithmic decision can snowball in incredibly destructive ways
Time -
Cathy O’Neil has seen Big Data from the inside, and the picture isn’t pretty. Weapons of Math Destruction opens the curtain on algorithms that exploit people and distort the truth while posing as neutral mathematical tools. This book is wise, fierce, and desperately necessary
Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not To Be Wrong -
Weapons of Math Destruction is a fantastic, plainspoken call to arms. Cathy O’Neil’s book is important precisely because she believes in data science. It’s a vital crash course in why we must interrogate the systems around us and demand better
Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and co-editor of Boing Boing
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