Whistleblower, activist, and Senate candidate Chelsea Manning spoke extensively at SXSW about the dangers of unchecked data collection and misplaced trust in algorithms. “The algorithms that I worked on in Iraq have found their way into policing, and also into the way the corporate world works, whether it’s your credit report or advertising data,” said Manning, who was released from prison last May after former President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year sentence for leaking classified intelligence. “All these different tools that we saw being used in one context have found their way everywhere else.”

Manning compared her work on predictive analysis in the Army a decade ago to how she fears modern programmers have approached artificial…

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