Quotes by Cathy O'Neil

Cathy O'Neil

By construction, the world of big data is siloed and segmented and segregated so that successful people, like myself – technologists, well-educated white people, for the most part – benefit from big data, and it’s the people on the other side of the economic spectrum, especially people of color, who suffer from it. They suffer from it individually, at different times, at different moments. They never get a clear explanation of what actually happened to them because all these scores are secret and sometimes they don’t even know they’re being scored.

Data

Successful

White

Especially from my experience as a quant in a hedge fund – I naively went in there thinking that I would be making the market more efficient and then was like, oh my God, I’m part of this terrible system that is blowing up the world’s economy, and I don’t want to be a part of that.

Thinking

World

Would Be

Every system using data separates humanity into winners and losers.

Data

Humanity

Loser

For whatever reason, I have never separated the technical from the ethical.

Ethical

Reason

Google is so big you have no idea what a given person does.

Doe

Google

Ideas

I don’t think anybody’s ever notified that they were sentenced to an extra two years because their recidivism score had been high, or notified that this beat cop happened to be in their neighborhood checking people’s pockets for pot because of a predictive policing algorithm. That’s just not how it works.

Thinking

Two

Years

I know how models are built, because I build them myself, so I know that I’m embedding my values into every single algorithm I create and I am projecting my agenda onto those algorithms.

Agendas

Algorithms

Embedding

I think big data companies only like good news. So I think they’re just hoping that they don’t get sued, essentially.

Data

News

Thinking

I think there’s inherently an issue that models will literally never be able to handle, which is that when somebody comes along with a new way of doing something that’s really excellent, the models will not recognize it. They only know how to recognize excellence when they can measure it somehow.

Excellence

Issues

Thinking

I think what’s happened is that the general public has become much more aware of the destructive power of Wall Street.

Streets

Thinking

Wall

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Able

Agendas

Algorithms

Auras

Awful

Black

Bonus

Car

Complaining

Data

Decision

Discrimination

Doe

Embedding

Ethical

Excellence

Giving

Goal

Google

Humanity

Ideas

Important

Including

Interesting

Issues

Jobs

Lenses

Life And Death

Loser

Might

News

Nsa

Past

Patterns

People

Perfect

Reason

Secret

Streets

Stuff

Successful

Talking

Teacher

Technology

Thinking

Two

Wall

White

World

Would Be

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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Quotes by Cathy O'Neil

Cathy O'Neil

Especially from my experience as a quant in a hedge fund – I naively went in there thinking that I would be making the market more efficient and then was like, oh my God, I’m part of this terrible system that is blowing up the world’s economy, and I don’t want to be a part of that.

Every system using data separates humanity into winners and losers.

For whatever reason, I have never separated the technical from the ethical.

Google is so big you have no idea what a given person does.

I know how models are built, because I build them myself, so I know that I’m embedding my values into every single algorithm I create and I am projecting my agenda onto those algorithms.

I think big data companies only like good news. So I think they’re just hoping that they don’t get sued, essentially.

I think what’s happened is that the general public has become much more aware of the destructive power of Wall Street.

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Topics by Cathy O’Neil

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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