Automating Inequality: Virginia Eubanks with Paul D. Miller

Virginia Eubanks reveals how high-tech tools profile, police, and punish the poor.

Technology has changed decision-making in finance, employment, politics, and health and human services. Automated systems can flag neighborhoods for heightened policing, families for needed assistance, and financial documents for fraud. These tactics affect everyone, but have a disproportionate impact on the poor. They also provide the ethical distance needed to make difficult—and, according to the author, inhumane—choices.

In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on impoverished and working-class people in America. This conversation shares the stories of the real people and circumstances behind the data.

A New America Fellow, Eubanks has worked in community technology and economic justice movements for two decades. She is joined by  writer, musician, and multimedia artist Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky), to discuss the implications of these systems, as well as a path toward ending data-based discrimination.

This program is presented in partnership with New America NYC.

FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED

Registration does not guarantee admission. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A stand by line will form thirty minutes before the program.

The Program Room opens at 6 PM.