Moving fast and breaking us all: Big tech's unaccountable algorithms

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They decide who passes and who fails in secondary school. They decide who gets arrested and who goes to prison. They decide what news you see first thing in the morning as well as what news you won’t see. And they drive the business models—and revenues—of the world’s largest and most powerful digital platforms. By Ellery Roberts Biddle & Jie Zhang.

…our findings suggest that much of the technology driving revenue for the world’s most powerful digital platforms is accountable to no one—not even the companies themselves.

The article content is divided into:

  • Why set human rights standards for algorithms?
  • Does the company disclose a commitment to human rights in its development and use of algorithmic systems?
  • How do they feed their algorithms?
  • How do the algorithms work?
  • Do companies measure the risks that their systems pose for human rights?
  • Ethics commitments are not going to solve these problems

None of the platforms published policies demonstrating an effort to integrate respect for human rights into their deployment of algorithms for their products and services, where it actually counts for users. Interesting read!

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Tags machine-learning big-data cloud cio learning