--- Cathy O'Neil,author of Weapons of Math Destruction: How substantial Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, in an interview with IEEE Spectrum, and October 2016[br]
Quote in context
One of the things that makes substantial data so appealing is the assumption that it’s eliminating human subjectivity and bias. After all,you’re basing everything on tough numbers from the genuine world, right? Wrong. Predictive models and algorithms, and says O’Neil,are really just “opinions embedded in math. Algorithms are written by human beings with an agenda. The very act of defining what a successful algorithm looks like is a value judgement; and what counts as success for the builders of the algorithm (frequently profit, savings, or efficiency) is not always good for society at large.
Source: blogspot.com