The subject of algorithms has gone mainstream recently, with the startling fast proliferation of ChatGPT-based software and Congressional hearings and a Supreme Court hearing on Section 230 and YouTube, to name just ta few examples.
People are getting worried that software is controlling more and more of our daily lives, and especially software that seems to be beyond human comprehension.
Wired, always looking at the leading edge of tech, has just published a four-part series called Suspicion Machine that looks at one algorithm that could potentially ruin peoples' lives.
Obscure government algorithms are making life-changing decisions about millions of people around the world. Now, for the first time, we can reveal how one of these systems works. For Suspicion Machine, a four-part series from WIRED and Lighthouse Reports, we gained unprecedented access to one of the world’s most sophisticated welfare fraud detection algorithms.
We obtained not only the algorithm itself, but also the data that powered it and the handbook used by the data scientists who ran it. This allowed us to see how such a sophisticated system evaluated people as potentially committing benefits fraud. What we found was deeply concerning.
In our first story, we show you how algorithms discriminate against people based on their age and ethnicity. In our second story, we reveal the human impact of biased risk-scoring algorithms. Our third story interrogates the politics that has led to the rise of these broken systems. Finally, in our fourth story, we show how a combination of secretive governments and yet more secretive private companies has created a system in which lives are ruined—with little hope of justice.
Articles like these are why I subscribe to Wired.
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