Cathy O'Neil Quotes
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I think big data companies only like good news. So I think they're just hoping that they don't get sued, essentially.
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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.
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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.
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That's what we do when we work in Silicon Valley tech startups: We think about who's going to benefit from this. That's almost the only thing we think about.
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The disconnect I was experiencing was that people hated Wall Street, but they loved tech.
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The NSA buys data from private companies, so the private companies are the source of all this stuff.
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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.
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I think what's happened is that the general public has become much more aware of the destructive power of Wall Street.
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You'll never be able to really measure anything, right? Including teachers.
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The training one receives when one becomes a technician, like a data scientist - we get trained in mathematics or computer science or statistics - is entirely separated from a discussion of ethics.
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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.
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When people are not given an option by some secret scoring system, it's very hard to complain, so they often don't even know that they've been victimized.
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Evidence of harm is hard to come by.
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Especially from my experience as a quant in a hedge fund - I naively went in there thinking that I would be making the market more efficient and then was like, oh my God, I'm part of this terrible system that is blowing up the world's economy, and I don't want to be a part of that.
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For whatever reason, I have never separated the technical from the ethical.
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Occupy provided me a lens through which to see systemic discrimination.
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Google is so big you have no idea what a given person does.
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I wanted to prevent people from giving them too much power. I see that as a pattern. I wanted that to come to an end as soon as possible.
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My fantasy is that there is a new regulatory body that is in charge of algorithmic auditing.