Who Controls Our Algorithmic Future?

The accelerating pace of digitization is bringing real, tangible benefits to our society and economy, which we cover daily in the pages on this site. But increased reliance on machine learning algorithms brings its own unique set of risks that threaten to unwind progress and turn people against one another. Three speakers at last week's Strata Data Conference in New York put in all in perspective. The first Strata speaker with a dire warning about the potential for algorithms to go haywire was Cathy O'Neil, who holds a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University and is the founder of the website mathbabe.org. After working as a quant in the finance industry for several years, O'Neil became disenfranchised with the field and how it used data science to rack up profits at customers' expense.