WCC Cathy O’Neil: Weapons of Math Destruction: Big Data and You

Catherine (“Cathy”) Helen O’Neil is an American mathematician, data scientist, and author of The New York Times bestseller, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. The book has been widely praised and won the Euler Book Prize. The Boston Globe described the book as “an urgent critique of . . . the rampant misuse of math in nearly every aspect of our lives.

”O’Neil is a thought leader who explores the realities and dangers of social networking, the consequences of algorithm design, and the defense of human dignity in the context of exploitative capitalism. We live in the age of the algorithm, so the decisions that affect our lives— where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are increasingly being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone should be judged according to the same rules.

O’Neil reveals that the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination—propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process. O’Neil has become a whistle-blower when it comes to the world of Big Data.

Cathy O’Neil earned a PhD in mathematics from Harvard and taught at Barnard College before moving to the private sector, where she worked for the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. She then worked as a data scientist at various start-ups, building models that predict people’s purchases and clicks. Formerly active in the Occupy movement, she writes opinion columns in Bloomberg View. She also wrote The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation, published in 2022. She launched the Lede Program in Data Journalism at Columbia University, and founded ORCAA, a consultancy providing algorithmic auditing services focused on safety, fairness, and principled use of data.