Hannah Fry has a cool job title: Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at University College London. Fifty bucks for anyone who knew that was a thing.
She’s brilliantly entertaining, though. I first heard about her as a guest on The Knowledge Project in 2020, and then dove into her book. Hello World is a thought-provoking exploration of the increasing importance of algorithms in our everyday lives. Fry dives into their influence on areas like healthcare, criminal justice, and transportation while questioning their ethical implications and limits.
Hello World in 10 bullets:
1. Algorithms are everywhere: From online shopping to criminal sentencing, algorithms influence many aspects of modern life. They make decisions faster and more accurately than humans.
2. Bias is built-in: Algorithms inherit biases from their creators and data, leading to ethical concerns, such as racial bias in criminal justice tools (that determine the likelihood of someone becoming a repeat offender, for example).
3. Human-machine partnership: Algorithms excel at pattern recognition, but humans provide context, judgment, and empathy. Collaboration is more effective than automation alone.
4. Ethical dilemmas in automation: Autonomous vehicles highlight complex moral issues, such as how to prioritize lives in unavoidable accidents (real-life applications of the infamous trolley problem)
5. Personalization vs. privacy: Personalized services offer convenience, but also pose privacy risks and contribute to filter bubbles that limit exposure to diverse perspectives.
6. Transparency matters: Algorithms often operate as “black boxes,” making their decisions hard to scrutinize. Greater accountability and openness are essential.
7. The illusion of objectivity: People often trust algorithms blindly, but their mistakes and biases underscore the need for critical thinking.
8. Learning from failures: High-stakes failures in healthcare, transportation, and other fields show the importance of testing, iteration, and human oversight.
9. Ethics in design: Diverse and inclusive teams can help mitigate biases in algorithms, ensuring fairer and more equitable systems.
10. Algorithms should serve humanity: We need to find a balanced approach where algorithms enhance, rather than replace, human judgment, guided by empathy and societal values.
How I’ll Apply It
I’m not sure I learned anything new from this book, but it forced me to think about what I question or inherently take for granted. We tend to place blind trust in rules–and algorithms are really just sets of rules–without considering that those rules were created by people, with all of their imperfections and hidden motivations and biases. As AI makes algorithms even more central to every aspect of daily life, we will depend on greater model transparency and critical questioning to ensure the best outcomes.