Archive

Governing Algorithms, An Introduction

So how did this start? Actually all of us—Solon, Sophie, and many oth­er fel­lows and research, not just at PRG, the Information Law Institute, but also at MCC—we’ve been study­ing com­pu­ta­tion, automa­tion, and con­trol in dif­fer­ent forms for quite a long time. But it was only at the end of last sum­mer real­ly that we real­ized that there’s this new notion of the algo­rithm gain­ing currency.

danah boyd: Algorithmic Accountability and Transparency

In the next ten years we will see data-driven tech­nolo­gies recon­fig­ure sys­tems in many dif­fer­ent sec­tors, from autonomous vehi­cles to per­son­al­ized learn­ing, pre­dic­tive polic­ing, to pre­ci­sion med­i­cine. While the advances that we will see will cre­ate phe­nom­e­nal new oppor­tu­ni­ties, they will also cre­ate new challenges—and new worries—and it behooves us to start grap­pling with these issues now so that we can build healthy sociotech­ni­cal systems.