A dump of what I’ve been reading lately:
- The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people – including a nice description by Patrick Ball of why the “Ridiculously optimistic” machine learning algorithm is “completely bullshit.”
- Violence in Blue – Patrick Ball appears again to explain that “one-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.”
- A scientist calculated the cost of not being a straight man, and she wants a tax cut – “These are the results a few of her calculations: it costs about £38,000 ($54,000) to be a gay man in England; women in the US tech industry pay a tax of between $100,000 and $300,000; and women in tech in Hong Kong or Singapore face an even steeper $800,000 to $1.5 million.”
- Digital star chamber: Algorithms are producing profiles of you. What do they say? You probably don’t have the right to know – Frank Pasquale reminds us that “cyberspace is no longer an escape from the ‘real world’. It is now a force governing it via algorithms” and argues that “when algorithms start affecting critical opportunities for employment, career advancement, health, credit and education, they deserve more scrutiny.” #algacc
