“When I think about whether I want to take a job, I don't just think about whether it's technically interesting, although I do consider that. I also consider the question of whether it's good for the world.” ThinkingWorldWantJobsInteresting Author:Cathy O'Neil
“So much of our society as a whole is gearing us to maximize our salary or bonus. Basically, we just think in terms of money. Or, if not money, then, if you're in academia, it's prestige. It's a different kind of currency. And there's this unmeasured dimension of all jobs, which is whether it's improving the world.” IfsThinkingWorldKindDifferentWholeJobsTermDimensionsOur SocietyDifferent KindsCurrencyImprovingSalaryPrestigeAcademiaBonus Author:Cathy O'Neil
“Most people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.” PeopleThinkingMindPastValuesMoralityEthicsMovedBeing TrueAssociation Author:Cathy O'Neil
“Especially from my experience as a quant in a hedge fund - I naively went in there thinking that I would be making the market more efficient and then was like, oh my God, I'm part of this terrible system that is blowing up the world's economy, and I don't want to be a part of that.” ThinkingWorldWantWould BeEconomyTerribleFundEfficientBlowing UpHedge Fund Author:Cathy O'Neil
“That's what we do when we work in Silicon Valley tech startups: We think about who's going to benefit from this. That's almost the only thing we think about.” ThinkingBenefitsValleysSiliconSilicon Valley Author:Cathy O'Neil
“I think what's happened is that the general public has become much more aware of the destructive power of Wall Street.” ThinkingHappenedStreetsWallDestructiveGeneral PublicDestructive Power Author:Cathy O'Neil
“I don't think anybody's ever notified that they were sentenced to an extra two years because their recidivism score had been high, or notified that this beat cop happened to be in their neighborhood checking people's pockets for pot because of a predictive policing algorithm. That's just not how it works.” PeopleThinkingYearsTwoHappenedBeatsExtrasScorePocketsNeighborhoodTwo YearsPotCopAlgorithmsRecidivism Author:Cathy O'Neil
“The national conversation around white entitlement, around institutionalized racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, I think, came about in large part because of the widening and broadening of our understanding of inequality. That conversation was begun by Occupy.” ThinkingMatterUnderstandingBlackWhiteMovementConversationRacismInequalityBlack Lives MatterEntitlementBlack Lives Author:Cathy O'Neil
“The Facebook algorithm designers chose to let us see what our friends are talking about. They chose to show us, in some sense, more of the same. And that is the design decision that they could have decided differently. They could have said, "We're going to show you stuff that you've probably never seen before." I think they probably optimized their algorithm to make the most amount of money, and that probably meant showing people stuff that they already sort of agreed with, or were more likely to agree with.” PeopleThinkingSaidShowsStuffDecisionTalkingDesignAmountDecidedAgreeDesignerAlgorithms Author:Cathy O'Neil
“I think big data companies only like good news. So I think they're just hoping that they don't get sued, essentially.” ThinkingBigsCompanyNewsDataGood NewsThink Big Author:Cathy O'Neil
“I think there's inherently an issue that models will literally never be able to handle, which is that when somebody comes along with a new way of doing something that's really excellent, the models will not recognize it. They only know how to recognize excellence when they can measure it somehow.” ThinkingKnowsWayAbleKnow HowIssuesModelsExcellenceHandleExcellentNew Ways Author:Cathy O'Neil
