Algorithms Are Deciding Who Gets the First Vaccines. Should We Trust Them?

December 29, 2020

(MSN) – When front-line workers at Stanford Health Care were passed over for the first wave of coronavirus vaccines, officials at the hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., blamed the “very complex algorithm” it had built to decide employees’ place in line. But unlike the sophisticated machine-learning algorithms that underpin the modern Internet, Stanford’s system was actually just a basic formula, simple enough for an Excel spreadsheet. And a breakdown of the algorithm, sent to medical residents and first published by MIT Technology Review, shows that its real error came from the humans who had designed it: namely, prioritizing employees based on age rather than their exposure to the virus at work.