For fruits and veggies, there’s organic. For coffee and clothes, there’s fair trade. Now, algorithms have their own certification mark: a seal of approval that designates them as accurate, unbiased, and fair.
The seal is the brainchild of Cathy O’Neil, a statistician and author who has written extensively about how biased algorithms exacerbate inequality in society. Her writing–both on her blog Math Babe and her influential 2016 book Weapons of Math Destruction–has become a touchstone in conversations about the way algorithms in the areas of hiring, insurance, criminal justice, and credit can negatively impact people’s lives. Right before the election, O’Neil launched her own company, O’Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing, or ORCAA, with the aim of helping organizations, including the rental startup Rentlogic, that rely on algorithms to ensure that they’re not accidentally harming people.
“People don’t really check that things are working,” she explains. “They don’t even know how to ask the question.”
