Algorithms: The Cause of and Solution to Our Modern Problems? A Conversation with Eric Mazumdar

Many academics choose to study one thing and one thing only. Eric Mazumdar is not one of those academics. As an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences and economics at Caltech, Mazumdar uses tools and ideas from economics to understand emerging problems in machine learning. Some of those problems have grown immensely more complicated with the development of algorithms that steer our choices about the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the movies we watch, the information we digest online, or even whether to grant someone bail or give them a home loan. But algorithms are a double-edged sword; for all the complexity they add to our lives, their behaviors can be easier to model and understand than human behaviors. [Caltech story]