Big data: road to the future or just weapons of math destruction?

Big data: road to the future or just weapons of math destruction? 

Big Data are like the God Janus: on the one end they offer great advantages, make our lives easier by offering us unlimited possibility to better organize our work and our everyday life; they allow us to achieve a better understanding of the world around us and can be used to monitor and control the environment, in practice they are changing our world and our lives in ways which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.  

On the other end, however, if ill used -either by negligence or on purpose- they can become “Weapons of Math Destruction” leading to wrong decisions which can badly affect the weakest and poorest part of our society. The Data Anlytics phenomenon is only the most recent case of misuse of big data.

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— Giuseppe Longo

Professor of Astrophysics

Accademico Pontaniano

Associate – California Institute of Technology

Associate . INFN and INAF

Previous work in the Film Collection

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