By Sophie Zhang
7th grade | Wilmette Junior High School | Illinois
Second place winner, Information and Artificial Intelligence category
With lines from “How an Algorithm Denied Food to Thousands of Poor in India’s Telangana” by Tapasya, Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, and Divij Joshi, a Pulitzer Center reporting project
A cramped, three-room house in an urban slum.
A woman named Bismillah Bee.
An algorithm.
The government.
And waiting, waiting, waiting.
Money is short—do we apply to the program?
Or peel more garlic?
Apply to the program.
Is this woman eligible?
Samagra Vedika says not.
I believe my algorithm.
Request rejected.
Rations denied.
Algorithm is wrong.
It’s not.
Does it look like I own a four-wheeler?
Widow, the authorities accept the algorithm’s word, not yours.
Faulty data.
Bad algorithmic decisions.
Several thousands wronged.
Not just you suffering in the dark.
Seven years of rations—denied.
And we still can’t fix it.
Sophie Zhang is from Wilmette, Illinois and is currently a middle schooler in Wilmette Junior High School. At WJHS, she is part of the school's MathCounts team, and helped WJHS win the 2nd place in MathCounts District Competition and move onto state level. In addition, she is a member of the Science Olympiad team and placed 1st at Regionals and 11th at State, where her events placed 4th, 6th, and 9th out of a total of 46 teams in State Competition. She participated in the debate team at WJHS, as well as the orchestra, where she played violin. She loves math, science, reading and writing.
Read more winning entries from the 2024 Fighting Words Poetry Contest.