A revelatory exploration of the hottest trend in technology and the dramatic impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large. Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape? How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode? And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak? The key to answering these questions, and many more, is big data....

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives -- where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health 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. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this book, the opposite is true. The models being used today...

The deputy editor of The Futurist magazine discusses the impact the increased use of computer-aided forecasting will have on everyday life, cataloging the possible benefits and potential abuses of predictive analytics over the next decade. --Publisher's description.

"In this book, David Sumpter takes an algorithm-strewn journey to the dark side of mathematics. He investigates the equations that analyse us., influence us and will (maybe) become like us, answering questions such as: Are Google algorithms racist and sexist? ; Why do election predictions fall so drastically? ; What does the future hold as we relinquish our decision-making to machines? Featuring interviews with those working at the cutting edge of...

"Mindf*ck goes deep inside Cambridge Analytica's "American operations," which were driven by Steve Bannon's vision to remake America and fueled by mysterious billionaire Robert Mercer's money, as it weaponized and wielded the massive store of data it had harvested on individuals--in excess of 87 million--to disunite the United States and set Americans against each other. Bannon had long sensed that deep within America's soul lurked an explosive tension....

" "One of the most exciting developments from the world of ideas in decades, presented with panache by two frighteningly brilliant, endearingly unpretentious, and endlessly creative young scientists." - Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature Our society has gone from writing snippets of information by hand to generating a vast flood of 1s and 0s that record almost every aspect of our lives: who we know, what we do, where we go, what...