Author: Eric Siegel
Publisher: Harvard Business Review
Publication Year: 2020
Summary: The following article discusses how through the use of machine learning, we can figure out a lot about a person such as their race and gender just by taking in certain information about the individual and having an algorithm figure this out. The article mentioned that China is capable of using facial recognition to identify people who are part of the Uighurs (which is a minority ethnic group). The article also mentions the scandal at Target where they were able to predict if an individual was pregnant or not. While these 2 examples can seem fascinating, a lot of bad can occur with these algorithms. For the target example, the problem or unethical issue is that Target had access to some data which could be private to an individual. With the example of China being able to track an ethnic group, the problem is that if they are capable of tracking an ethnic group, they are possibly able to track where individuals are located. In conclusion, while some algorithms are very interesting, sometimes the algorithms are invading peoples privacy.
