How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Weapons of Math Destruction

'A manual for the 21st-century citizen... accessible, refreshingly critical, relevant and urgent' - Financial Times 
 
'Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year 
 
In this New York Times bestseller, Cathy O'Neil, one of the first champions of algorithmic accountability, 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 loan, how much we pay for 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. 
 
And yet, as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and incontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination. Tracing the arc of a person's life, O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort CVs, grant or deny loans, evaluate workers, target voters, and monitor our health. 
 
O'Neil calls on modellers 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.

This is a manual for the 21st-century citizen, and it succeeds where other big data accounts have failed - it is accessible, refreshingly critical and feels relevant and urgent

Well-written, entertaining and very valuable

O'Neil has become a whistle-blower for the world of Big Data... Her work makes particularly disturbing points about how being on the wrong side of an algorithmic decision can snowball in incredibly destructive ways

Cathy O'Neil has seen Big Data from the inside, and the picture isn't pretty. Weapons of Math Destruction opens the curtain on algorithms that exploit people and distort the truth while posing as neutral mathematical tools. This book is wise, fierce, and desperately necessary

Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not To Be Wrong

Weapons of Math Destruction is a fantastic, plainspoken call to arms. Cathy O'Neil's book is important precisely because she believes in data science. It's a vital crash course in why we must interrogate the systems around us and demand better

Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and co-editor of Boing Boing

Often we don't even know where to look for those important algorithms, because by definition the most dangerous ones are also the most secretive. That's why the catalogue of case studies in O'Neil's book are so important; she's telling us where to look

In today's world, if you want to change your fate you've got to pray at the altar of the algorithm... As math guru Cathy O'Neil argues in her newest book, these models are just the latest way America's institutions perpetuate bias and prejudice to reward the rich and keep the poor, well, poor. It's a nuanced reminder that big data is only as good as the people wielding it

Not math heavy, but written in an exceedingly accessible, almost literary style; her fascinating case studies of WMDs fit neatly into the genre of dystopian literature. There's a little Philip K. Dick, a little Orwell, a little Kafka in her portrait of powerful bureaucracies ceding control of the most intimate decisions of our lives to hyper-empowered computer models riddled with all of our unresolved, atavistic human biases

O'Neil is an ideal person to write this book... She is one of the strongest voices speaking out for limiting the ways we allow algorithms to influence our lives and against the notion that an algorithm, because it is implemented by an unemotional machine, cannot perpetrate bias or injustice... While Weapons of Mass Destruction is full of hard truths and grim statistics, it is also accessible and even entertaining. O'Neil's writing is direct and easy to read - I devoured it in an afternoon

Cathy O'Neil is the author of the bestselling Weapons of Math Destruction, which won the Euler Book Prize and was longlisted for the National Book Award. She received her PhD in mathematics from Harvard and has worked in finance, tech, and academia. She launched the Lede Program for data journalism at Columbia University and recently founded ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company. O'Neil is a regular contributor to Bloomberg View.

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives - whether we get a job or a loan, how much we pay for insurance - are being made 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 incontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination, creating a toxic cocktail for democracy. 
 
Tracing the arc of a person's life, Cathy O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort CVs, grant or deny loans, evaluate workers, target voters and monitor our health. O'Neil calls on modellers 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.

Cathy O'Neil

An engaging read . . . O'Neil lays out the ways in which shame drives problems such as obesity, drug addiction, poverty and political divides. She discusses how social media thrives on and is designed to encourage humiliation, and unpicks the many fallacies in how we think about shame

Striking ... O'Neil examines how the 'shame industrial complex' divides us and how we can develop a healthier, more forgiving version

A unique and riveting look at a crucial yet little understood aspect of modern life

A simple rejoinder to our digital phantasmagoria. . . O'Neil encourages readers to try to think more deeply not just about what shame is but what it might be for

What is the relationship between shame and power - and is shame being weaponised? Smart thinker Cathy O'Neil tackles the question in this book, exploring whether public shaming is becoming dangerous

In this trenchant, and at times heartbreaking, critique of the shame industrial complex, Cathy O'Neil lays bare how shame underpins the deep divides of modern society. But not all shame is bad, O'Neil contends -- used correctly it can be a powerful tool to fight injustice

Nicole Aschoff, author of The New Prophets of Capital

An intimate and unflinching account of the many ways that shame is produced, weaponized, and turned into profit by industries that can only grow big when we feel small. With moral clarity and powerful storytelling, Cathy O'Neil reverse engineers the 'shame machine,' revealing its inner workings and inciting nothing short of a cultural reckoning that has the potential to blow this machine to bits

Ruha Benjamin, author of Race After Technology

Cathy O'Neil's fascinating, important, and insightful book is a hard look in the mirror, but one that also gives us hope that we can marshal shame into a force for social reform and not just social punishment

Michael Patrick Lynch, author of Know-it-All Society

Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction was a thunderclap -- using wonderfully vivid stories, it exposed the dehumanizing effects of a data-driven world. The Shame Machine is even more personal, but no less devastating. Whether it's through body-shaming mobs or a deeply flawed judicial system, humans use shame as a weapon to bully, demean, and devalue other humans. And with the unstoppable growth of digital tools, this power has become far too great. O'Neil reminds us that we must resist the urge to judge, belittle and oversimplify, and instead allow always for complexity and lead always with empathy

Whether it's smoking in public, masking against Covid-19, or promulgating political lies, O'Neil allows room for shame while also urging readers always to 'punch up' at the social and economic machine and its masters rather than down at the vulnerable. A thoughtful blend of social and biological science, history, economics, and sometimes contrarian politics

Cathy O'Neil

Praise for The Shame Machine

An engaging read . . . O'Neil lays out the ways in which shame drives problems such as obesity, drug addiction, poverty and political divides. She discusses how social media thrives on and is designed to encourage h ...

Striking ... O'Neil examines how the 'shame industrial complex' divides us and how we can develop a healthier, more forgiving version

A unique and riveting look at a crucial yet little understood aspect of modern life

An engaging read . . . O'Neil lays out the ways in which shame drives problems such as obesity, drug addiction, poverty and political divides. She discusses how social media thrives on and is designed to encourage h ...

Striking ... O'Neil examines how the 'shame industrial complex' divides us and how we can develop a healthier, more forgiving version

A unique and riveting look at a crucial yet little understood aspect of modern life

An engaging read . . . O'Neil lays out the ways in which shame drives problems such as obesity, drug addiction, poverty and political divides. She discusses how social media thrives on and is designed to encourage h ...

Striking ... O'Neil examines how the 'shame industrial complex' divides us and how we can develop a healthier, more forgiving version

A unique and riveting look at a crucial yet little understood aspect of modern life

Books by Cathy O'Neil

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