algorithms

Panel 4: "You might have a data set that's 75% male faces and over 80% lighter-skin faces. So what it means is the machine is learning a representation of the world that is skewed. But how are we getting such skewed data sets?"

Science

COMIC: How a computer scientist fights bias in algorithms

5:00am March 14, 2022

Computer scientist Joy Buolamwini is on a mission to fight bias in algorithms. In this comic, Buolamwini discusses the way biased algorithms can lead to real world inequality — and what we can do.

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Yunseo Choi won first place Wednesday in this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search STEM competition.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me An Algorithm: STEM Contest Winner Pairs Data

2:11pm March 18, 2021

The world of matchmaking won't have to rely on luck as much as math, thanks to Yunseo Choi. The 18-year-old came up with a matching theory that can be applied to people looking for a life partner.

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A man is seen portraying a hacker with binary code symbols on a laptop.

When Computers Collude

7:30am April 02, 2019

by Greg Rosalsky

Companies are increasingly using algorithms to set their prices, but is that giving them too much power over consumers?

Facebook has become so powerful that, for some people, having a Facebook account is more important than a driver's license. But when you lose that account, there's no recourse.

Building, And Losing, A Career On Facebook

12:54pm February 03, 2017

by Aarti Shahani

What a meme-maker and an investigative journalist teach us about the power of the Facebook empire, and how its opaque decisions harm real people.

Quid found 228,912 English-language stories in the news and on the blogs about Clinton's health between Sept. 12 and Oct. 12.

Pundits Vs. Machine: Who Did Better At Predicting Campaign Controversies?

7:19pm October 17, 2016

by Laura Sydell

We pitted two political pundits against an algorithm to compete at predicting the biggest issues to arise over a month in the presidential election. Now we find out who won.

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Quid, a data analytics firm, uses proprietary software to search, visualize and analyze text.

Politics & Government

Pundits Vs. Machine: Predicting Controversies In The Presidential Race

9:41am September 20, 2016

by Laura Sydell

How well can a computer program predict which controversies around Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are likely to re-emerge in the coming weeks? Two human pundits agree to compete against the machine.

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Police crime tape marks the scene where a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed and an 18-year-old man was wounded in April in Chicago. The grim milestone of 500 homicides already passed this year in Chicago.

National

In Effort To Curb Violence In Chicago, A Professor Mines Social Media

6:04pm September 09, 2016

by NPR Staff

Desmond Patton is studying how gangs in Chicago use social media to communicate. Now he is helping to create an algorithm to predict when a social media threat might spark real life violence.

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Words classified according to their gender, as the word embedding sees it. Words below the line are words that (generally) should be gendered, while words above the line are problematic if gendered.

Science

He's Brilliant, She's Lovely: Teaching Computers To Be Less Sexist

8:01am August 12, 2016

by Byrd Pinkerton

Algorithms teach computers how to process language. But because they draw on human writing, they have some biases. Researchers are trying to weed out those problematic associations.

The algorithms that serve up what you like can often create closed loops of their own, packed only with people who agree with you already.

The Reason Your Feed Became An Echo Chamber — And What To Do About It

7:14am July 24, 2016

by NPR Staff

It often feels as if social media serves less as a bridge than an echo chamber, with algorithms that feed us information we already know and like. So, how do you break that loop? We ask some experts.

Can Big Data Help Head Off Police Misconduct?

3:57pm July 19, 2016

by NPR Staff

An officer who has been under stress after responding to cases of domestic abuse or suicide may be at higher risk of a negative interaction with the public, a data scientist says.

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