Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil Page B
Authors: Cathy O'Neil
Tags: General, Social Science, Political Science, Business & Economics, Public Policy, Statistics, Privacy & Surveillance
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and it made laughable mistakes. Most people I know found it near useless. But now I hear people talking to their phones all the time, asking for the weather report, sports scores, or directions. Somewhere between 2008 and 2015, give or take, the linguistic skills of algorithms advanced from pre-K to middle school, and for some applications much higher.
These advances in natural language have opened up a mother lode of possibilities for advertisers. The programs “know” what a word means, at least enough to associate it with certain behaviors and outcomes, at least some of the time. Fueled in part by this growing linguistic mastery, advertisers can probe for deeper patterns. An advertising program might start out with the usual demographic and geographic details. But over the course of weeks and months it begins to learn the patterns of the people it’s targeting and to make predictions about their next moves. It gets to know them. And if the program is predatory, it gauges their weaknesses and vulnerabilities and pursues the most efficient path to exploit them.
In addition to cutting-edge computer science, predatory advertisers often work with middlemen, who use much cruder methods to target prospects. In 2010, one effective ad featured a photo of President Obama and said: “Obama Asks Moms to Return to School: Finish Your Degree—Financial Aid Available to Those Who Qualify.” The ad suggested that the president had signed a new bill aimed at getting mothers back in school. This was a lie. But if it spurred people to click, it served its purpose.
Behind this misleading headline, an entire dirty industry was beavering away. When a consumer clicked on the ad, according to a ProPublica investigation, she was asked a few questions, including her age and phone number, and was immediately contacted by a for-profit school. These callers didn’t give her any more information about President Obama’s new bill, because it never existed. Instead they offered to help her borrow money for enrollment.
This kind of online targeting is called “lead generation.” Its goal is to come up with lists of prospects, which can be sold—in this case, to for-profit universities. According to the ProPublica report, between 20 and 30 percent of the promotional budgets atfor-profit colleges go to lead generation. For the most promising leads,colleges will pay as much as $150 each.
One lead generator,Salt Lake City–based Neutron Interactive, posted fake jobs at websites like Monster.com, as well as ads promising to help people get food stamps and Medicaid coverage, according to David Halperin, a public policy researcher. Using the same optimization methods, they would roll out loads of different ads, measuring their effectiveness for each demographic.
The purpose of these ads was to lure desperate job seekers to provide their cell phone numbers. In follow-up calls, only 5 percent of the people showed interest in college courses. But those names were valuable leads.Each one was worth as much as $85 to for-profit colleges. And they would do everything in their power to make that investment pay off. Within five minutes of signing up, according to aUS Government Accountability Office report, prospective students could expect to begin receiving calls. One target received more than 180 calls in a single month.
The for-profit colleges, of course, have their own methods for generating leads. One of their most valuable tools is the College Board website, the resource that many students use to sign up for SAT tests and research the next step in their lives.According to Mara Tucker, a college preparedness counselor for the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, a public school in Brooklyn, the search engine on the website is engineered to direct poor students toward for-profit universities. Once a student has indicated in an online questionnaire that she’ll need financial aid, the for-profit colleges pop up at the top
These advances in natural language have opened up a mother lode of possibilities for advertisers. The programs “know” what a word means, at least enough to associate it with certain behaviors and outcomes, at least some of the time. Fueled in part by this growing linguistic mastery, advertisers can probe for deeper patterns. An advertising program might start out with the usual demographic and geographic details. But over the course of weeks and months it begins to learn the patterns of the people it’s targeting and to make predictions about their next moves. It gets to know them. And if the program is predatory, it gauges their weaknesses and vulnerabilities and pursues the most efficient path to exploit them.
In addition to cutting-edge computer science, predatory advertisers often work with middlemen, who use much cruder methods to target prospects. In 2010, one effective ad featured a photo of President Obama and said: “Obama Asks Moms to Return to School: Finish Your Degree—Financial Aid Available to Those Who Qualify.” The ad suggested that the president had signed a new bill aimed at getting mothers back in school. This was a lie. But if it spurred people to click, it served its purpose.
Behind this misleading headline, an entire dirty industry was beavering away. When a consumer clicked on the ad, according to a ProPublica investigation, she was asked a few questions, including her age and phone number, and was immediately contacted by a for-profit school. These callers didn’t give her any more information about President Obama’s new bill, because it never existed. Instead they offered to help her borrow money for enrollment.
This kind of online targeting is called “lead generation.” Its goal is to come up with lists of prospects, which can be sold—in this case, to for-profit universities. According to the ProPublica report, between 20 and 30 percent of the promotional budgets atfor-profit colleges go to lead generation. For the most promising leads,colleges will pay as much as $150 each.
One lead generator,Salt Lake City–based Neutron Interactive, posted fake jobs at websites like Monster.com, as well as ads promising to help people get food stamps and Medicaid coverage, according to David Halperin, a public policy researcher. Using the same optimization methods, they would roll out loads of different ads, measuring their effectiveness for each demographic.
The purpose of these ads was to lure desperate job seekers to provide their cell phone numbers. In follow-up calls, only 5 percent of the people showed interest in college courses. But those names were valuable leads.Each one was worth as much as $85 to for-profit colleges. And they would do everything in their power to make that investment pay off. Within five minutes of signing up, according to aUS Government Accountability Office report, prospective students could expect to begin receiving calls. One target received more than 180 calls in a single month.
The for-profit colleges, of course, have their own methods for generating leads. One of their most valuable tools is the College Board website, the resource that many students use to sign up for SAT tests and research the next step in their lives.According to Mara Tucker, a college preparedness counselor for the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, a public school in Brooklyn, the search engine on the website is engineered to direct poor students toward for-profit universities. Once a student has indicated in an online questionnaire that she’ll need financial aid, the for-profit colleges pop up at the top
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