Weapons of Math Destruction

Some 73 percent of Americans, according to a Pew Research report, believe that search results are both accurate and impartial.

So to sum up, these are the three elements of a WMD: Opacity, Scale, and Damage.

The human victims of WMDs, we’ll see time and again, are held to a far higher standard of evidence than the algorithms themselves.

crime prediction software made by PredPol, a Big Data start-up based

the Education Department released loads of data on a website.

The customers’ ignorance, of course, is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

I keep in my head, my informal internal model, into a formal external one. In creating my model, I’d be extending my power and influence in the world. I’d be building an automated me that others can implement, even when I’m not around.

algorithm—an opinion formalized in code—that

Direct mail was microtargeting on training wheels.