Ep. 203: How Search Engines Like Google and Other Algorithms Reproduce Social Inequality

Safiya Noble is the guest on this week's edition of The Chauncey DeVega Show. She is a professor at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School of Communication and the author of the new book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

On this week's show, Safiya and Chauncey discuss how algorithms such as Google as well as "artificial intelligence" are actually making social inequality worse in America and around the world, the misplaced faith in such technologies, their threat to democracy, and why so many people use social media and other types of digital distractions to find meaning in their otherwise lonely and unfulfilled lives in an age of economic precarity.

During this week's podcast Chauncey reflects on The New York Times op-ed from an anonymous Trump senior staff member and how psychiatrist Bandy Lee shared with him, first, how she was contacted last year about Trump's apparently failing mental health.

Chauncey is also upset that MSNBC did not mention his name, again, and also blurred out his name when talking about Dr. Lee's conversation with people at the White House regarding Donald Trump's mental health.

Dr. David Reiss, who is one of the contributors to the bestselling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, also stops by the virtual bar and salon this week to explain why Donald Trump is so mentally unwell that he would likely not qualify to be a police officer--never mind having the authority to order the destruction of the world with nuclear weapons. 

At the end of this week's podcast, Chauncey shares a warning from history--this time from a Holocaust survivor who also fought the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto--about the perils America and the world are experiencing because of the rise of Trumpism and other right-wing authoritarian movements around the world.

SELECTED LINKS OF INTEREST FOR THIS EPISODE OF THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW 

• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble 
• AI isn't a crystal ball but it might be a mirror 
• IBM used NYPD surveillance footage to develop technology that lets police search by skin color 
• Rise of the racist robots and how AI is learning our worst impulses 
• Eternal Emperor in His Own Mind: The Distorted Reality of Donald Trump 
• Trump's troubling behavior raises questions his medical exam didn't answer 
• The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy Lee 
• Exclusive: Psychiatrist Bandy Lee says White House officials told her Trump was “unraveling”
• I survived the Warsaw ghetto. Here are the lessons I’d like to pass on 
• Here's How Industrialization and Individualism Led to a New Language of Loneliness

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS WEEK'S SHOW YOU MAY LIKE THESE PREVIOUS EPISODES OF THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW AS WELL

Ep. 202: Tim Wise Explains How the Republican Party is a White Identity Cult

Ep. 200-1: Black KkKlansman/Joe Feagin on Donald Trump, Racism, and Elite White Male Power

Ep. 200-2: Joe Feagin on Liberal White Racism and "Colorblind" America

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