Algorithms of oppression: how search engines reinforce racism

Algorithms are everywhere, yet their presence and workings remain obscured.It is only recently that the discriminatory effects of algorithmic (machine learning, artificial intelligence) classification and decision-making are being exposed.Safiya Umoja Noble's Algorithms of Oppression is a ground-breaking book which declares that '...artificial intelligence will become a major human rights issue in the twenty-first century' (p.1).The author's argument -with a critical focus on the ubiquitous Google search enginedemolishes any beliefs that algorithms are benign or neutral in their operations and practices.Noble situates algorithms as integral to the socio-technical (re)production of digital and 'real-world' inequalities.She attests to how algorithms '...reinforce oppressive social relationships and enact new modes of racial profiling' (p.1).After reading this book, the quotidian call "Just Google it" will acquire an entirely different meaning.Noble's book can be located in the emergence of a 'critical algorithm studies'.It sits alongside other significant texts such as Weapons of Maths Destruction (O'Neal) and Automating Inequality (Eubanks).What makes Noble's work stand out is an interdisciplinary approach that centres race in studying the effects of commercial search platforms.Across