WOMD Reading Response #1

Algorithims clashing with our society.

While reading “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil I found several concerns about algorithms, and how they misguide people through the use of assumptions and effectiveness. Mathematicians and computer scientists hold the power to these hidden mathematical models creating ongoing destructive loops towards our society. For instance, she uses an example of the misuse of software systems through schools located in Washington DC during 2007-9. At that time, teachers who taught in underperforming schools were tested by a measurement known as the value-added modeling. This was a saddening approach as it was made to get rid of “bad” teachers instead of basing a teacher off their engagement, classroom management, and working on specific skills. Furthermore, another problem with this model or approach is how untrustworthy it was. With that being said, the model wasn’t updated continuously, instead it relied on student’s test results each year. Assessing teachers based off of student’s test scores is in return prejudice, because they primarily tested schools that were underperforming. Nearly 207 teachers “failed” the impact evaluation (testing teachers on math and reading), which meant they would be fired before the start of the next school year. This was a prime example of what the author would call as a Weapon of Mass Destruction(WMD). Additionally, another problem that arose while reading was with the systematic approach our government uses when sentencing a person to prison. This particular algorithm was known as LSI-R (level of service inventory revised) which developed questions for inmates’/future inmates to fill out. In addition, it was categorized into different groups (high, medium, low) which was based off of the number of points that was gathered from the questions. A lot of these questions seemed to be biased in numerous ways because of how they asked personal questions which came as a negative effect towards someone who grew up in a bad community. With that being said, this is their way of making things “efficient” and “fair” when it comes to data. How is it fair to let an individual create a model that essentially has already developed an assumption filled environment based off of a person’s profile? The answer is, it’s not fair yet our world is continuing to allow these actions to be taken upon by the big data economy. The last example demonstrated how in 1988 the U.S. News Data created the first model that ranked colleges. This quickly became a national standard that had a negative impact on colleges and students all throughout the United States. This is an example of a WMD because three quarters of the algorithm were purely opinion based. Each of these algorithms had the same negative effect on the receiving end. My concern now about technology is how hard it is to take away power that has already been exposed into the world. These issues of inhumane algorithms have been happening and still happen every day with several people being effected, whether it is losing a job, prison sentences, or these people creating their opinions and data for us to become distracted by. My question is, why are we letting a certain group of people create these encoded models that decide important life choices for us?