A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life — and threaten to rip apart our social fabric

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 urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can’t get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he’s then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a “toxic cocktail for democracy.” Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.

Tracing the arc of a person’s life, O’Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future, both as individuals and as a society. These “weapons of math destruction” score teachers and students, sort résumés, grant (or deny) loans, evaluate workers, target voters, set parole, and monitor our health.

O’Neil calls on modelers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end, it’s up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives. This important book empowers us to ask the tough questions, uncover the truth, and demand change.

一位前华尔街量化师对弥漫在现代生活中的数学模型敲响了警钟--它有可能撕开我们的社会结构

我们生活在算法的时代。越来越多的影响我们生活的决定--我们去哪里上学，我们是否获得汽车贷款，我们为健康保险支付多少钱--不是由人类做出，而是由数学模型做出。从理论上讲，这应该导致更大的公平性。每个人都根据相同的规则进行评判，偏见被消除了。

但是，正如凯西-奥尼尔在这本紧迫而必要的书中所揭示的，事实恰恰相反。今天使用的模型是不透明的，不受监管的，而且是不可质疑的，即使它们是错误的。最令人不安的是，它们强化了歧视。如果一个贫穷的学生不能得到贷款，因为贷款模式认为他的风险太大（凭借他的邮政编码），那么他就被切断了可以使他摆脱贫穷的教育，一个恶性循环随之而来。模式正在支持幸运者，惩罚受压迫者，创造出一种 "有毒的民主鸡尾酒"。欢迎来到大数据的黑暗面。

追踪一个人的生活弧线，奥尼尔揭露了塑造我们未来的黑箱模型，无论是作为个人还是作为社会。这些 "数学毁灭武器 "为教师和学生打分，对简历进行分类，发放（或拒绝）贷款，评估工人，瞄准选民，设定假释，并监测我们的健康。

奥尼尔呼吁建模者为他们的算法承担更多责任，并呼吁政策制定者规范他们的使用。但最终，还是要靠我们对支配我们生活的模型变得更加精明。这本重要的书使我们有能力提出棘手的问题，揭开真相，并要求改变。

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