A review by cocoonofbooks
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil

4.0

This was a succinct yet wide-ranging book on Big Data, covering everything from bank loans to college rankings to political polling. I appreciated that O'Neil laid out a clear thesis about the components necessary for an algorithm to be a "weapon of math destruction" and then provided examples of algorithms that did and did not meet these criteria. She showed how seemingly innocuous inputs can perpetuate inequities and emphasized the need for checking whether there are unintended consequences causing harm as a result of the algorithm. One key point she mentioned a couple of times, which I think she could have highlighted more, was that the same algorithm can cause harm or not depending on the context in which it's used (e.g., flagging someone high-risk for recidivism and giving them greater supports rather than a longer sentence). Because she organized the book around different areas that use algorithms, the arguments were a bit repetitive at times, and I would have liked a little more in the way of practical recommendations for designing and deploying algorithms that do not cause harm. But for a relatively quick read I thought she included a lot of valuable information and made her points well.