The Big, the Bad, the Un-American… In 2020, New York Times writer Kashmir Hill set out to answer a salient question: how dependent are we on Big Tech? Working with a technologist, Hill designed a virtual private network that blocked all internet addresses controlled by tech’s five largest companies: Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Meta, […]
Tag: algorithm
Algorithmic Injustice
Algorithms in the justice system started off as a noble solution to a serious problem: the bias of judges. There are two distinct ways that judges can be biased — targeted bias, such as sexist and racist beliefs, and cognitive bias, ways in which our mental circuitry fails to work logically (such as how judges […]
Dangers of Predictive Policing Algorithms
As more and more states are employing algorithms in policing, the dystopian world of The Minority Report might be more of a reality than a sci-fi film. The use of algorithms in policing is not a new topic. Predpol, a for-profit company pioneering predictive policing algorithms, was a largely controversial issue in 2012, sparking criticisms […]