The most important goal I had in mind was to convince people to stop blindly trusting algorithms and assuming that they are inherently fair and objective.

It's a standard thing you hear from startup people - that their product is somehow improving the world. And if you follow the reasoning, you will get somewhere, and I'll tell you where you get: You'll get to the description of what happens to the winners under the system that they're building.

I set up a company, an algorithmic auditing company myself. I have no clients.

An insurance company might say, "Tell us more about yourself so your premiums can go down." When they say that, they're addressing the winners, not the losers.

Because of my experience in Occupy, instead of asking the question, "Who will benefit from this system I'm implementing with the data?" I started to ask the question, "What will happen to the most vulnerable?" Or "Who is going to lose under this system? How will this affect the worst-off person?" Which is a very different question from "How does this improve certain people's lives?"

There are lots of different ways that algorithms can go wrong, and what we have now is a system in which we assume because it's shiny new technology with a mathematical aura that it's perfect and it doesn't require further vetting. Of course, we never have that assumption with other kinds of technology.

There's less of a connection for a lot of people between the technical decisions we make and the ethical ramifications we are responsible for.