Frank Pasquale – Black Box Society
There’s a repetition of this question when it comes to the transparency of our data being shared around, “should they tell us?”. With this rise of data sharing amongst big corporations as well as the government, we have created a world where it is organized by people who we can’t see but can see us. The book also poses a few critical strategies to “keeping the black boxes closed”. Real secrecy, legal secrecy, and obfuscation.
So going off of the question provided, how much of our information is being used should we be aware of? How would it affect our lives once we do know? Would it be easier to be blind to it?
Cathy O’Neill – The Era of Blind Faith in Big Data Must End
Algorithms built on the prospect of being a useful tool to determine success is a faulty approach. Algorithms are essentially just opinions embedded in code, and they reflect on our patterns and past practices as opposed to being the objective tool system that we had aimed it to be. As O’Neill put it, they automate the status quo. In order to bypass their silent and possibly detrimental actions, we have to check them for fairness. O’Neill lists them as having a data integrity check, audit the definition of success, consider accuracy, and recognize the long-term effects of algorithms.
Do you think that algorithms reflect on human biases? What other ways do you think that algorithms could potentially cause that could harm the lives of others?
Virginia Eubanks – Automating Inequality
Eubanks discusses the history and rise of the digital poorhouses and how it responds and recreates a narrative of austerity, the idea that there is not enough for everyone, so there’s this question of who deserves their human rights. She looks into the social services and how algorithms meant to aid the system to determine the people that are in need of help have actually caused a greater issue due to the history of how America treats the poor. She brings up an example where the system confuses parenting while poor as poor parenting, which exposes the system as a poverty profiling system that is a feedback loop of injustice.
She provides possible solutions to the issue, do you think that in the coming future we can somehow work together to override this issue and come to a better just future for the impoverished? Or do you think that this unfair system will continue to thrive for the benefit of the privileged and the detriment of the poor?
Janet Vertesi – My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data
I remember reading about this story in the past. In order to try and avoid getting bombarded with ads and suggestions by social media platforms regarding her pregnancy, Vertesi does her very best to essentially live an analog life. I commend her for the extent of work she has done to slide under the radar, however, it came with the cost of having tense relationships and the possibility of seeming like a criminal with the practices she was using.
Would you ever consider doing something like this to be under the radar of social media data collectors?
William and Lucas – The Computer Says No
I think that this is the perfect example of our reliance on technology. It is a simple yet effective execution of how we have been so trusting of our technology that we cannot see how it could cause an error, when in fact, just as humans, they can be just as flawed. There really isn’t a truly objective form of technology, as everything has been created to cater to our needs and have in some way shape or form, our tendencies to make mistakes as well. You can make a nearly perfect program, but biases from the creator can still be present, and we shouldn’t blindly believe everything the computer tells us just because we assume it is more reliable than humans.