Virtually Speaking artwork

Cathy O'Neil On Weapons of Math Destruction

Virtually Speaking

English - September 23, 2016 01:00 - 59 minutes - 53.5 MB - ★★★★ - 14 ratings
News Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed


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 mathemetician and former quant Cathy O’Neil reveals in Weapons of Math Destruction, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong.  

Guests