Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue • Hacker News Board

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#121

Post by smallnamespace » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #118

mathgenius wrote: post #13

The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?". Anyone who has played around with these algorithms for solving decoding problems knows that they are fabulously powerful. But these message passing algorithms have two weaknesses: (A) When there is more than one solution (B) When there are small l…

"(B) When there are small loops in the message network" Can you elaborate a real-world example of this for the layperson ? 50k foot view is fine :)

Here's the most important loop that's been driving up staggering wealth inequality in our lifetimes:

- Corporations and the ultra-rich tend to be the ones who try to profit-maximize the most (because people who care about other things, don't work as hard to accumulate wealth, and because corporations that profit-maximize the best tend to survive and grow better)

- National governments since WW2 had done a decent job of redistributing wealth, but since there are increasing returns to scale on investing in tax avoidance/evasion, it is the richest individuals and corporations that are best able to avoid taxes and move wealth offshore

- It is cheaper and easier to cut a sweetheart tax with a corporation or a rich individual to temporarily attract capital to a nation-state than to generate wealth the hard way through education and infrastructure investment

So our global capitalist system for the past few decades has simultaneously selected for the most selfish, profit-maximizing institutions and individuals, while also setting up a race to the bottom between nations (and even cities and states -- see Amazon's bid for a 2nd headquarters or Tesla's Gigafactory) to see who can give the biggest tax breaks to those at the top.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#122

Post by crpatino » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:18 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #110

saulrh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? This is an interview with an author that was conducted specifically to talk about the book and the material in it. What did you expect ? Unrelated, I'd like to see your argument against that particular line. IMO the comparison is an excellent one; its only issue is that the chosen scope ("the financial market") is too small. Corporations and other bureaucratic entities like governments are powerful cross-domain…

Calling financial markets AI is wrong in pretty much the only way a word can be "wrong": It's not what most people mean when they talk about AI. This makes it really easy to make statements that sound deep and meaningful, but really aren't. E.g. "I'm not worried about Artificial Intelligence - we already have artificial intelligence, its called a company. Companies are artificial, and they behave intelligently". This…

You need to get out more. The problem with companies is not that they are intelligent, but that they are artificial.

>What people are worried about is:

>1. Soon we will be able to create software/robots that replace tons of human jobs. This has nothing to do with "companies as an AI".

Well, there is now a tendency for big companies to hire smaller outsourcing companies to provide labor and shield the first company from the liabilities that come with hiring human labor. I know I do not have the kind of proof that courts, and HN some dwellers, demand... but from hearsay in the local job market it is public knowledge that managers and ex-managers at main company are often owners of the outsourcing ones, or at least it was so 10 years ago before Indian companies like TATA raided the market.

Also, it is not as if outsourcing companies are making peanuts. More hearsay, supposedly first hand, says that they charge as much as 1,000% of employees salary for their services. It is not possible in the US, but in the offshoring side of things, US based headquarters usually do not have a grasp of how much/little the foreing job markets are.

In the local market, $1,000USD per month is a great salary for a junior programmer, and good for a senior one. Cost of liviing is lower that most US cities, let alone SFO...

> 2. A super-intelligence will be created that is vastly smarter than any human, and can make itself even smarter, but will have different goals than humanity.

Superintelligence is a red herring. If you command as much resources as a Fortune 50 company, you can do a world of harm if your goals are sufficiently opposed to those of the general society. You just need to be "intelligent" enough to not go under during the next couple of years, which most big companies are.

More so, let's consider the case when the company has "substandard intelligence", say if the management team is incompetent, or if they are distracted with internal conflict and lack the ethics to put the interest of the company ahead of their own, personal gain. A stupid company with plenty of resources to burn can deliver truckloads of hurt on its way down, and it does not have to be intentional either, unforeseen consequences are way more realistic ways for bad things to haven than the kind of evil performed by Bond-movie villians.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#123

Post by vpribish » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

jpster wrote: post #80

>We had plenty of bias before but we couldn’t see it. We can’t see, for example, that the algorithms that manage the workers at McDonald’s or The Gap are optimized toward not giving people full-time work so they don’t have to pay benefits. All that was invisible. It wasn’t until we really started seeing the tech-infused algorithms that people started being critical. I’m not sure how this can be said with a straight f…

“Tech-infused”. Like tech is an herb or a spice? Surely a sign that there are no coherent ideas to be found from that writer.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#124

Post by platz » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

mathgenius wrote: post #13

The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?". Anyone who has played around with these algorithms for solving decoding problems knows that they are fabulously powerful. But these message passing algorithms have two weaknesses: (A) When there is more than one solution (B) When there are small l…

> The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?".

no, no no. To even propose that the answer to the question of "what should we do?" can be solved by the financial system is laughable; that is pure free-market absolutism.

The anwer to the question "what should we do?" is _political_ .

Let us not confuse the market with politics.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#125

Post by pgtan » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

banned1 wrote: post #23

zghst wrote: post #11

"why capitalism is like a rogue AI" These people seriously need to take a step back. At some point you cross the bridge between reporting and actively advertising someone's personal views. I can't ever trust or read people who constantly try to push an agenda, it's disingenuous. Even more so, when reporting, engaging in personal exchange without the discussing data and statistics, i.e. the facts, you are just allowin…

Hysteria sells.

Capitalism and AI bashing also. This book will become a hit in Germany.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#126

Post by pishpash » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

mathgenius wrote: post #13

The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?". Anyone who has played around with these algorithms for solving decoding problems knows that they are fabulously powerful. But these message passing algorithms have two weaknesses: (A) When there is more than one solution (B) When there are small l…

The gist is right but over all this is some handwavy gibberish.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#127

Post by pishpash » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 8:08 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #121

rsync wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(B) When there are small loops in the message network" Can you elaborate a real-world example of this for the layperson ? 50k foot view is fine :)

Here's the most important loop that's been driving up staggering wealth inequality in our lifetimes: - Corporations and the ultra-rich tend to be the ones who try to profit-maximize the most (because people who care about other things, don't work as hard to accumulate wealth, and because corporations that profit-maximize the best tend to survive and grow better) - National governments since WW2 had done a decent job…

That's not the result of 'loops in the network'. That's the result of the memory effect of wealth. See, this is the problem with handwavy gibberish.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#128

Post by notthemessiah » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 8:28 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #110

saulrh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? This is an interview with an author that was conducted specifically to talk about the book and the material in it. What did you expect ? Unrelated, I'd like to see your argument against that particular line. IMO the comparison is an excellent one; its only issue is that the chosen scope ("the financial market") is too small. Corporations and other bureaucratic entities like governments are powerful cross-domain…

Calling financial markets AI is wrong in pretty much the only way a word can be "wrong": It's not what most people mean when they talk about AI. This makes it really easy to make statements that sound deep and meaningful, but really aren't. E.g. "I'm not worried about Artificial Intelligence - we already have artificial intelligence, its called a company. Companies are artificial, and they behave intelligently". This…

It's not that companies are "operating intelligently" it's that they aren't: they're operating on a principle that maximizes profits (and ROI for shareholders) at the expense of everything else, that's the central guiding principle, and nobody at a publicly traded firm can oppose it successfully, without being voted off the board by shareholders. It's effectively an algorithm that delegates tasks to human operators, and automation is slowly replacing the human component.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#129

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 8:40 PM UTC

platz wrote: post #124

mathgenius wrote: post #13

The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?". Anyone who has played around with these algorithms for solving decoding problems knows that they are fabulously powerful. But these message passing algorithms have two weaknesses: (A) When there is more than one solution (B) When there are small l…

> The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?". no, no no. To even propose that the answer to the question of "what should we do?" can be solved by the financial system is laughable; that is pure free-market absolutism. The anwer to the question "what should we do?" is _political_ . Let us no…

[deleted]

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#130

Post by stult » Fri, Oct 06, 2017, 8:42 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #48

andrewla wrote: post #35

My only objection to this is a semantic one -- the word "algorithm" is not being well-served here. The correct word for this sort of thing is "heuristic". The concern isn't that algorithms themselves are incorrect, the concern is that the problem they are trying to solve is a heuristic one, not a formal one. Saying "let's write an algorithm to improve search results" is meaningless; "let's design and implement a heur…

Algorithms running on "social hardware" can be surprisingly formal. A famously well-documented example are early modern witchhunts. The humorous depiction in Monty Python and the Holy Grail does a surprisingly good job at conveying the algorithmic nature.

Many aspects of the law are algorithmic. Even though there is no one, settled formal definition for algorithm, statutory and common law meet many informal definitions. Laws usually lay out an ordered, (theoretically) unambiguous set of steps for deciding a legal issue. When lawyers talk about "elements of a test," they are referring to this structured logic.

For example, the elements required to prove a negligence claim are:

1. Duty

2. Breach of Duty

3. Cause in Fact

4. Proximate Cause

5. Damages

When evaluating a negligence claim, a lawyer first tries to determine if the defendant owed the plaintiff any duty of care, then whether the plaintiff breached that duty, then if that breach was the factual cause of a harm suffered by the plaintiff, then whether the causal relationship was close enough to be considered legally proximate, and then, finally, whether the plaintiff actually suffered measurable damages.

Arguably, that superficially algorithmic process frequently breaks down in practice. For example, it's often easier to start with the damages suffered by a plaintiff and work backwards by identifying the causes, then who was responsible for those causes and any duties they may have owed to the plaintiff. However, regardless of how the lawyer and plaintiff identify whom to sue, they must frame their pleadings to allege the elements of the tort in the order specified by their jurisdiction's law, so the actual practice of law in court amounts to an algorithmic exercise.