I would argue that one of the major problems with our blind trust in algorithms is that we can propagate discriminatory patterns without acknowledging any kind of intent.

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.

The disconnect I was experiencing was that people hated Wall Street, but they loved tech.

Especially from my experience as a quant in a hedge fund - I naively went in there thinking that I would be making the market more efficient and then was like, oh my God, I'm part of this terrible system that is blowing up the world's economy, and I don't want to be a part of that.

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.

I wanted to prevent people from giving them too much power. I see that as a pattern. I wanted that to come to an end as soon as possible.

I don't think anybody's ever notified that they were sentenced to an extra two years because their recidivism score had been high, or notified that this beat cop happened to be in their neighborhood checking people's pockets for pot because of a predictive policing algorithm. That's just not how it works.