Description: "The critical turning points in our lives are often decided by algorithms--rules carried out by software, on a computer. Algorithms determine who gets scarce seats at top public schools. At a bank or an insurance company, an algorithm mines your data to decide whether you'll get a loan. If you apply for a job at a large employer, an algorithm is increasingly likely to scan your râesumâe, deciding before any human pays attention whether you're even worth talking to. In each case, there are deeply human questions at the heart of a job that has been given to a machine. Which of a person's traits are legitimately related to her job performance and fair game for her potential employer to consider? How should scarce public resources--be they medicine, housing, or a coveted slot at an elite public school--be distributed? Voices in the Code is about choices like these--the ethical trade-offs inside life-altering algorithms--and about how such choices can be made"--
Review Quotes: "Voices in the Code by David Robinson asks the most urgent question about technology at the appropriate level of abstraction: how do we make algorithms that impact the public accountable to the public? Robinson insists, correctly, that this is not a new question, just a new level of complexity. Dodging the fad appeal of techno-solutionism, he points the reader to profound lessons from publicly accountable algorithms that have been largely resolved, such as kidney transplant lists."
--Cathy O'Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction and founder and CEO, O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing (ORCAA)