How does a love for math become the destruction of all mankind? Cathy O’neil writes a book called “ Weapons of Math Destruction”, and although I have only read a few pages, these few words speak high volumes. In 2008, The United States fell into the Great Recession. O’neil discusses the rise of unemployment and the downfall of many corporations during this time. She also mentions work of mathematicians that accompanied this hard period. The mathematicians also known as the WMD (Weapons of Math Destruction), have created this computer program to track all human transactions. Meaning, this program collects data of society’s motives, students, criminals, expenditures, and also workers.
Computer programs are designed by humans, and that comes with a great deal of biases. O’neil discussed a time in Washington D.C. where the new mayor was firing “Under-performed teacher’s”. Whether the teacher had great credibility and a strong relationship with their peers, the computer program designed to eliminate such teachers did not consider better results. O’neil then mentions “The researchers knew that many variables, from students’ socioeconomic backgrounds to the effects of learning disabilities, could affect student outcomes” (O’neil 42). Basically, people knew that other factors could have come into play yet they still went forward in firing “Under-performed teachers”.
More uses of WMD
We then have employers who will use WMD’s to see the credit scores of potential employees to help the hiring process. Unfortunately, when the WMDs are exposed and called out by the public for its unfair advantages, programmers will just go and code the program differently. But never really getting rid of the actual problem, the WMD itself. This brings up a funny thought about the great recession. If the mathematicians could control everything, couldn’t they have attempted to prevent this incline of unemployment? To further question, perhaps the programmers could have seen this recession coming? And if they did, what was the reason for withholding this information?
A scholarly article written by Knowledge at Wharton discussed “Standard analysis also failed, in part, because of the widespread use of new financial products that were poorly understood, and because economists did not firmly grasp the workings of the increasingly interconnected global financial system”. Simply stating that the economists did not understand how institutions The first step that should be taken to stop this destruction is to block the makers of these programs. The brains behind this program are the reason people have been lacking morality.
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