EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017

EVENT: “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy”

PLACE: Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor

DETAILS: We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health 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.

But as Cathy O’Neil reveals, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can’t get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he’s then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a “toxic cocktail for democracy.” Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.

Tracing the arc of a person’s life, O’Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. These “weapons of math destruction” score teachers and students, sort résumés, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole and monitor our health.

O’Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policymakers to regulate their use. But in the end, it’s up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives.

INFORMATION: Talk is free to the public. Please register at midas.umich.edu/2017.

SPONSORS: Michigan Institute for Data Science, U-M Office of Research, Dissonance Event Series.