Listen free for 30 days

  • Automating Inequality

  • How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
  • Written by: Virginia Eubanks
  • Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
  • Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (7 ratings)

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Automating Inequality cover art

Automating Inequality

Written by: Virginia Eubanks
Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $21.92

Buy Now for $21.92

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps, and cash benefits in three years because a new computer system interprets any mistake as "failure to cooperate." In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. 

Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems - rather than humans - control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. 

In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The audiobook is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lies dying, to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile. 

The US has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline, and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values. This deeply researched and passionate audiobook could not be more timely.

©2017 Virginia Eubanks (P)2018 Tantor

More from the same

What listeners say about Automating Inequality

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.