Artificial intelligence can help predict how students, faculty and higher education institutions can succeed, but understanding how AI algorithms work and how they can fail is essential for avoiding harm, data scientist Cathy O’Neil said during an online conference Thursday. Algorithms are increasingly used in higher education with the goal to improve education and uncover the path to success for students and universities themselves. But according to O’Neil, biased data and misused algorithms can end up bringing stakeholders more harm that good. “Algorithms are everywhere. They’re basically replacing bureaucratic processes, deciding who deserves a job, who gets insurance at what costs, who gets a loan, it even decides how long someone should go to jail based on what they think the risk of being rearrested is,” O’Neil said. “[But] no algorithm is itself a bad algorithm or a good algorithm. I can only really say the problems with algorithms in contexts.” Mount St. Mary’s University, […]