Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor




Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl show

Summary: Virginia Eubanks joins us for a rousing conversation about her timely and provocative book, Automating Inequality. In Automating Inequality, Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. "This book is downright scary,” says Naomi Klein, “but with its striking research and moving, indelible portraits of life in the ‘digital poorhouse,’ you will emerge smarter and more empowered to demand justice.” More info on this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-10-23/automating-inequality