For her part, O’Neil is all for empathy, but she doesn’t expect change to come through appeals. She’d rather sue or attack the problem through academia. In 2017 she proposed the creation of an institute aimed at researching algorithmic bias and ways to prevent it in the future. An algorithmic accountability institute would, she wrote, provide ethical training for future engineers and data scientists, offer workshops to highlight the connections between AI and other industries (law, journalism, etc.) and create standards for “human experimentation in the age of big data.”
