Cathy O'Neil (Catherine "Cathy" Helen O'Neil) Quotes
I know how models are built, because I build them myself, so I know that I'm embedding my values into every single algorithm I create and I am projecting my agenda onto those algorithms.
Cathy O'Neil
Quotes to Explore
By construction, the world of big data is siloed and segmented and segregated so that successful people, like myself - technologists, well-educated white people, for the most part - benefit from big data, and it's the people on the other side of the economic spectrum, especially people of color, who suffer from it. They suffer from it individually, at different times, at different moments. They never get a clear explanation of what actually happened to them because all these scores are secret and sometimes they don't even know they're being scored.
Cathy O'Neil
Micro-targeting is the ability for a campaign to profile you, to know much more about you than you know about it, and then to choose exactly what to show you.
Cathy O'Neil
Because of my experience in Occupy, instead of asking the question, "Who will benefit from this system I'm implementing with the data?" I started to ask the question, "What will happen to the most vulnerable?" Or "Who is going to lose under this system? How will this affect the worst-off person?" Which is a very different question from "How does this improve certain people's lives?"
Cathy O'Neil
So much of our society as a whole is gearing us to maximize our salary or bonus. Basically, we just think in terms of money. Or, if not money, then, if you're in academia, it's prestige. It's a different kind of currency. And there's this unmeasured dimension of all jobs, which is whether it's improving the world.
Cathy O'Neil
With recidivism algorithms, for example, I worry about racist outcomes. With personality tests for hiring, I worry about filtering out people with mental health problems from jobs. And with a teacher value-added model algorithm used in New York City to score teachers, I worry literally that it's not meaningful. That it's almost a random number generator.
Cathy O'Neil
There's less of a connection for a lot of people between the technical decisions we make and the ethical ramifications we are responsible for.
Cathy O'Neil
An insurance company might say, "Tell us more about yourself so your premiums can go down." When they say that, they're addressing the winners, not the losers.
Cathy O'Neil
There might never be that moment when everyone says, "Oh my God, big data is awful."
Cathy O'Neil
People felt like they were friends with Google, and they believed in the "Do No Evil" thing that Google said. They trusted Google more than they trusted the government, and I never understood that.
Cathy O'Neil
The disconnect I was experiencing was that people hated Wall Street, but they loved tech.
Cathy O'Neil
We don't let a car company just throw out a car and start driving it around without checking that the wheels are fastened on. We know that would result in death; but for some reason we have no hesitation at throwing out some algorithms untested and unmonitored even when they're making very important life-and-death decisions.
Cathy O'Neil
I know how models are built, because I build them myself, so I know that I'm embedding my values into every single algorithm I create and I am projecting my agenda onto those algorithms.
Cathy O'Neil