Weapons of math destruction

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 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. O’Neil calls on modellers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use.