CSP 5 Our New Computer Overlords, or: Why Oxy Rejected Emojis for This Title but Allowed it for the Descrip

From social media to high-frequency trading, from self-driving cars to recidivism prediction, computers have pretty much taken over our world. While technology has given us Netflix and Tinder, it has also brought new problems to society. Computational gerrymandering and the subversion of democracy through targeted social media campaigns continuously make headlines. Algorithms that know you are pregnant before you tell your parents, or that discriminate against people of color in beauty contests, are no longer science fiction but reality. How did we come to create our new computer overlords? And more importantly, what do we do now? Reading broadly from scientific and news articles as well as research and personal blogs, students will complete the course with an understanding of the societal problems that algorithms try (and often fail) to solve, and gain a healthy skepticism for purely technological solutions to complex issues.