Ever load up Google Maps, and think, “nah… I can do better than that!”

It’s the humans vs. the computer algorithms, and it’s hard to tell who’s winning (or should!)

How does Google Maps decide what route you should take? How does Spotify determine what kind of music you might like? And if I wanted to get a job at those companies, how would they choose one application out of a thousand resumes?

Decide. Determine. Choose. That’s what algorithms do.

Everything from song recommendations to health insurance rates to prison sentencing, companies and governments are using algorithms more than ever. But news reports seem to come out every other week exposing how biased algorithms are. So can we really trust them?

Adam and Chris explore what has made algorithms so popular, so useful, and so biased. But rather than getting rid of them, we can learn some surprising things from them—and surprising things about ourselves. And if we do, we just might be able to turn these algorithms into allies.

Links

The Washington Post reported on how this healthcare algorithm has highlighted significant inequalities in how medical insurance decisions are being made in the US.

When country music star Martina McBride created a playlist on Spotify, she had to scroll through 135 song recommendations before she found one from a female artist.

But, as this interactive article helpfully shows, weeding out bias is really a question of what trade-offs you’re going to live with, which in this case involves who gets out on bail and who doesn’t.

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Photo by Pedro Sandrini from Pexels