BSSC & Cubiss - Book Club
BSSC & Cubiss Book Club
By Brightlands Smart Services Campus & GTB Lab
Date and time
Wednesday, February 19, 2020 · 12:30 - 1:30pm CET
Location
Brightlands Smart Services Campus
Smedestraat 2 6411 CR Heerlen NetherlandsBSSC & Cubiss Book Club
Brightlands Smart Services Campus
Smedestraat 2 6411 CR Heerlen NetherlandsBook of the month:
Weapons of Math Destruction - How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy, by Cathy O'Neil
A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life — and threaten to rip apart our social fabric
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 Cathy O’Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong.
O’Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end, it’s up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change.
Happy reading and see you on February 19th!