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Weapons of Math Destruction
- How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
- Narrated by: Cathy O'Neil
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
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Editorial reviews
Publisher's summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former Wall Street quant sounds the alarm on Big Data and the mathematical models that threaten to rip apart our social fabric—with a new afterword
“A manual for the twenty-first-century citizen . . . relevant and urgent.”—Financial Times
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Globe • Wired • Fortune • Kirkus Reviews • The Guardian • Nature • On Point
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, 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 being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules.
But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil reveals, 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. Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.
Critic reviews
“O’Neil’s book offers a frightening look at how algorithms are increasingly regulating people. . . . Her knowledge of the power and risks of mathematical models, coupled with a gift for analogy, makes her one of the most valuable observers of the continuing weaponization of big data. . . . [She] does a masterly job explaining the pervasiveness and risks of the algorithms that regulate our lives.”—The New York Times Book Review
"Weapons of Math Destruction is the Big Data story Silicon Valley proponents won't tell. . . . [It] pithily exposes flaws in how information is used to assess everything from creditworthiness to policing tactics . . . a thought-provoking read for anyone inclined to believe that data doesn't lie.”—Reuters
“This is a manual for the twenty-first century citizen, and it succeeds where other big data accounts have failed—it is accessible, refreshingly critical and feels relevant and urgent.”—Financial Times
Featured Article: The best data science audiobooks to keep you safe and savvy
One of today's most important and most exciting fields, data science incorporates statistics, algorithms, scientific methods, programming skills, and more to draw insights and value from data for everything from creating targeted marketing campaigns to advancing medical research. Want to know more about this interdisciplinary study? We've used our own analytical skills to select the very best data science audiobooks and podcasts to be your guide.
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- By: Kai-Fu Lee
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In AI Superpowers, Kai-fu Lee argues powerfully that because of these unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power.
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Compelled to listen at 2x speed
- By LEE on 09-26-18
By: Kai-Fu Lee
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That Used to Be Us
- How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back
- By: Thomas L. Friedman, Michael Mandelbaum
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what we need to do now to rediscover America and rise to this moment.
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We have met the enemy and it is us.... Pogo
- By Soudant on 09-16-11
By: Thomas L. Friedman, and others
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Third World America
- How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
- By: Arianna Huffington
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation - that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream - an American Nightmare of our own making.
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Sad... but with a ray of hope
- By Maciej on 10-20-10
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The World Is Flat
- Further Updated and Expanded
- By: Thomas L. Friedman
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations?
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If you like cliches...
- By Jonathan Shultz on 09-08-07
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Data-ism
- The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else
- By: Steve Lohr
- Narrated by: Steve Lohr
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Coal, iron ore, and oil were the key productive assets that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Today data is the vital raw material of the information economy. The explosive abundance of this digital asset, more than doubling every two years, is creating a new world of opportunity and challenge. Data-ism is about this next phase, in which vast, Internet-scale data sets are used for discovery and prediction in virtually every field. It is a journey across this emerging world with people, illuminating narrative examples, and insights.
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More business case than serious analysis
- By Godfried Gubbels on 06-03-15
By: Steve Lohr
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Phishing for Phools
- The Economics of Manipulation and Deception
- By: George A. Akerlof, Robert J. Shiller
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since Adam Smith, the central teaching of economics has been that free markets provide us with material well-being, as if by an invisible hand. In Phishing for Phools, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller deliver a fundamental challenge to this insight, arguing that markets harm as well as help us. As long as there is profit to be made, sellers will systematically exploit our psychological weaknesses and our ignorance through manipulation and deception.
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Useful for a certain audience, but ...
- By Philo on 02-29-16
By: George A. Akerlof, and others
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Success and Luck
- Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
- By: Robert H. Frank
- Narrated by: Robert H. Frank
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine.
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Not what is advertised
- By Andre on 04-18-17
By: Robert H. Frank
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Machine, Platform, Crowd
- Harnessing Our Digital Future
- By: Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help listeners make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.
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Both How AND Why for Techies
- By Dan Collins on 08-11-17
By: Erik Brynjolfsson, and others
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Automating Inequality
- How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
- By: Virginia Eubanks
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, politics, health, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America.
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Excellent research, sprinkled with person bias
- By Katie on 12-31-19
By: Virginia Eubanks
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System Error
- Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
- By: Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, Jeremy M. Weinstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology’s liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. System Error exposes the root of our current predicament - how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get- and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.
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Excellent on tech. Weak on political speech.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-05-21
By: Rob Reich, and others
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Technically Wrong
- Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
- By: Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- Narrated by: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Buying groceries, tracking our health, finding a date: whatever we want to do, odds are that we can now do it online. But few of us ask how all these digital products are designed, or why. It's time we change that. Many of the services we rely on are full of oversights, biases, and downright ethical nightmares. Chatbots that harass women. Signup forms that fail anyone who's not straight. Social media sites that send peppy messages about dead relatives. Algorithms that put more black people behind bars.
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Pretty good but not complete
- By Casey on 10-29-17
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The Filter Bubble
- What the Internet Is Hiding from You
- By: Eli Pariser
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years: the rise of personalization.
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Now in the top 3 best books I've ever read
- By Brian Esserlieu on 05-26-11
By: Eli Pariser
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In True or False, former CIA analyst Cindy Otis takes listeners through the history and impact of misinformation over the centuries, sharing stories from the past and insights that listeners today can gain from them. Then, she shares lessons learned in over a decade working for the CIA, including actionable tips on how to spot fake news, how to make sense of the information we receive each day, and, most importantly, how to understand and see past our own information biases so that we can think critically about important issues and put events happening around us into context.
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Good Introduction
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Excellent research, sprinkled with person bias
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the narration is awful
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Good Introduction
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Excellent research, sprinkled with person bias
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A must read for all designers
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It does not work on Audible
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A fascinating and thought provoking examination of
- By Tom Dawkins on 03-13-23
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How to Speak Machine
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John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent interdisciplinary thinkers on technology and design. In How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future. Technology is already more powerful than we can comprehend, and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire.
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more sjw than computer science
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By: John Maeda
What listeners say about Weapons of Math Destruction
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Laurent Bourgault-Roy
- 01-08-17
More are US social problems that WMD
A WMD, or weapon of math destruction, are usage of algorithm that end up being discriminatory toward some people, or that cause problem with their wide scale deployment. For example, an algorithm that identify poor people can deny them services that help them, making them poorer. The algorithm prediction become self-fulfilling and prevent people from improving their condition.
The premise of the book is very good, and there are indeed a lot of good example of how misuse of big data algorithms can wreak havoc among society. The problem is that the author indignation push her away from what should have been the main subject of the book.
In the course of the book, the author raise a lot of recurring problem with WMD, like the "Flock of the feathers" generalization, the "self-fulfilling" prediction, the "discriminating proxy variable ", the "non-appealable conclusion" problem, the "non-measurable important factor". But those categories of problem, which, in my opinion, should have been the focus of the book, take a backseat toward the real subject of the book: how much the United State has social problems.
Each chapter is written to for denounce a specific social problem in the US, like predatory ads toward the poor, racial discrimination toward minority, terrible working hour among low wage workers, and so on. Some of those subjects are indeed caused by WMD. But for some, the link with the purported subject of the book is a bit strenuous. In some case, the author even exclaims "well, that has nothing to do with WMD of course". And a lot of time, WMD are not the root cause of the problem, they only exacerbate an existing one.
That leave you with a book that is more like a classical sociology book denouncing the ill of the American society, with some talk about big data sprinkled on top. If, like me, you are not an American, you may feel a bit left out by that book. This is a shame, because by refocusing the book on the generic problem caused by WMD that I described above, the book could have had a much broader appeal. Don't get me wrong: The problem O Neil talk about ARE important social problem. But they are very specific to her own country, and the militant tone can become grating. I felt at time that the author was not explaining to me how WMD work and how to deal with them, but was rather trying to force her opinion of how the world should be over me. She was dictating me how I should think, rather than helping me shape my own opinion.
In the end, I would have preferred a more objective tone and a better focus on WMD themselves, with conclusion that can be applied more broadly to everyone, not just US citizens.
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72 people found this helpful
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- Arseny
- 05-30-17
High-level banter of Occupy Wall Street minded author
I thought there would be at least something about the math. Nope. If I could recommend a better read / audible that would be "Algorithms To Live By" book.
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31 people found this helpful
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- Stephen
- 10-02-16
A fascinating and startling look at where big data is blind
This book is totally worth the listen for the intro and first chapter alone. It's very well-written and easy to follow, and manages to tell clear stories about how the software we use to assess teacher performance or insurance risk is all to often encoded with the prejudices and blind spots of the people who make it. It shows how that is already damaging equality and democracy, and warns of areas where it may get worse.
As a software designer, the one thing I would have loved from this book would be a little more depth about how software products might avoid these pitfalls. However, I'm probably coming at this book with unfair expectations, and it's likely a subject I just need to research more deeply.
Overall, if you enjoy podcasts like Freakonomics and Planet Money, you'll probably love this. Happy I listened!
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- Andrew
- 04-27-17
A diatribe about the unfairness in society
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Nothing.
Would you ever listen to anything by Cathy O'Neil again?
No.
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
It is well written and easy to listen to.
Any additional comments?
The author is a card carrying member of Occupy Wall Street. The entire book is a rant against the unfairness in society (e.g., poor people have bad credit because they are poor and society holds them back).
The algorithms and deep learning approach are not really analyzed in any depth but just serve as a convenient scapegoat for injustice.
There is nothing wrong with such a diatribe but it sure wouldn't sell many books and has been the topic of many, many books already.
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- Kelly W.
- 09-08-16
Save Yourself Some Time and Read A Pamphlet Instead
While the author makes some compelling points about the use of big data and how people can get caught up in "pernicious feedback loops," understand going in that she is an Occupy Wall Street sympathizer and has a strong left wing stance. Unfortunately I didn't understand this before my purchase and could have saved myself a lot of time by just reading a pamphlet instead.
While I would consider myself a centrist and am open to a lot of the arguments made by the left, some of this was just hard to stomach. (To be clear, she makes some valid points and gives the listener some interesting things to think about). The author is clearly out to prove a point about how the poor, minorities, and women are being kept down by The Man, which is now essentially labeled as "weapons of math destruction" or WMD's. The answer as usual is bigger government, more regulation & oversight, and socialist tendencies in order to provide justice.
In my view, the real answer lies somewhere in the middle and not on the fringes. If you're an OWS sympathizer, voted for Bernie, or think that capitalism stinks, this book is for you. If not, buyer beware and understand beforehand that you're going to be challenged to listen to 8+ hours of how everyone except the wealthy and privileged are being oppressed by WMD's.
Also, her narration is not the best. Kind of tedious at times.
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- k
- 09-06-16
Superb narration, beautifully written.
This is a must read! I thoroughly enjoyed the real world examples of how everything I do is a data point that is being used against me.
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- Derek
- 09-13-16
a must read for the modern economy
O'Neil makes a strong case for the increasing importance of ethics in data science. The evidence for discrimination, whether intentional or not, is compelling. This book is a must for data professionals and anyone concerned with growing inequality in the economy.
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- Michael
- 09-10-16
Experienced Insight and Issues Identified
The story is presented in a series of topics disclosures that compare by theme, data models can be made and used in ways that can damage society and make bad situations worse. Cathy O'Neil reveals how data models can be relied on with good intentions in mind, and by ignorance, dismissal or narrow-sightedness, can misrepresent, injure and derail people and societal function-ability.
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- Washington mom
- 11-02-20
Important book
Well written, well researched explanation of how algorithms can contribute to inequity, as well as possible solutions. Highly recommend!
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- Gilberto
- 10-26-20
Awakening!
Awesome book with scary facts we should know and tale action as soon as we can!
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