The public trusts big data way too much.

By construction, the world of big data is siloed and segmented and segregated so that successful people, like myself - technologists, well-educated white people, for the most part - benefit from big data, and it's the people on the other side of the economic spectrum, especially people of color, who suffer from it. They suffer from it individually, at different times, at different moments. They never get a clear explanation of what actually happened to them because all these scores are secret and sometimes they don't even know they're being scored.

I know how models are built, because I build them myself, so I know that I'm embedding my values into every single algorithm I create and I am projecting my agenda onto those algorithms.

When I think about whether I want to take a job, I don't just think about whether it's technically interesting, although I do consider that. I also consider the question of whether it's good for the world.

So much of our society as a whole is gearing us to maximize our salary or bonus. Basically, we just think in terms of money. Or, if not money, then, if you're in academia, it's prestige. It's a different kind of currency. And there's this unmeasured dimension of all jobs, which is whether it's improving the world.

You'll never be able to really measure anything, right? Including teachers.

Every system using data separates humanity into winners and losers.