This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. So while Congress sweats it out during their summer recess,

we decided to take a break from politics. Take refuge in the uncontroversial world of numbers.

After all, addition is neutral, right? For much of the 21st century, it seemed that if you had a problem,

you could just, you know, throw an algorithm at it.

Algorithms are replacing human advisors and brokers.

Our military uses an algorithm in their Skynet program to decide who should be on the terrorism kill list.

AI is being used for everything, from diagnosing illnesses to helping police predict crime hotspots.

The only problem? A lot of times they just don't work. Stanley Tucci may have said it best in the

midst of a robotic production snafu in the movie Transformers Age of Extinction.

Algorithms!

Math!

Why can't we make what we want to make the way we want to make it?

Why?

Yeah, why?

Well, in 2019, we sat down with slightly less dramatic flair

to ask Kathy O'Neill, mathematician, data scientist,

and investigative journalist, that very question. She founded the consulting firm, ORCAA,

which audits algorithms for racial gender and economic inequality and all around bad science.

She loves math.

She used to be a Wall Street quant.

But something about the financial meltdown of 2008

turned her off the use of algorithms for the purposes of prediction,

...