Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Weapons of Math Destruction: invisible, ubiquitous algorithms are ruining millions of lives

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

When I spoke at the London School of Economics a couple years ago, part of my talk was an extended criticism of the use of models in learning design and analysis. "The real issue isn't algorithms, it's models. Models are what you get when you feed data to an algorithm and ask it to make predictions. As (Cathy) O'Neil puts it, 'Models are opinions embedded in mathematics.'" This article is an extended discussion of the problem stated much more cogently than my presentation. "It's E Pluribus Unum reversed: models make many out of one, pigeonholing each of us as members of groups about whom generalizations -- often punitive ones (such as variable pricing) can be made.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 03, 2024 4:52 p.m.

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