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Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

wired.com

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Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#71

Post by nailer »

saulrh wrote: post #41
nailer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This one touches on the effects of Uber’s behavior and misbehavior, why capitalism is like a rogue AI, and whether Jeff Bezos might be worth voting for in the next election. I'd prefer 'Why OReilly believes capitalism is like a rogue AI'. Having Wired repeat OReilly's statement, rather than attribute it to him, makes it seem like they're not critically examining a very significant claim.

Why would Wired do that work when they can just recommend that you read the book? Why would you ask Wired to do that when you can just read the book? And why do you believe that you'd find that article any more satisfying than either this interview or the book?

> Why would Wired do that work when they can just recommend that you read the book?

Why do you think it's a significant amount of work to simply quote an author, rather than adopt their viewpoint?

> Why would you ask Wired to do that when you can just read the book?

Justification is provided in the comment you're responding to.

> And why do you believe that you'd find that article any more satisfying

I'd find an article that quotes OReilly rather than adopting his viewpoint more satisfying because it distinguishes OReilly's viewpoint from Wired's. This is the difference between journalism and marketing.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#72

Post by dcre »

pdimitar wrote: post #69
dcre wrote: post #64

Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits? "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…

> Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits? How do you know he's thinking that? The way he was talking, I read him as "well it's obvious that nobody has stopped this behavior so it's fair to assume that not enough people noticed". Wouldn't you agree with that? > And here's one that's more subtle, so I don't b…

Workers have been agitating against this behavior for many decades, so no, I would not agree that it is fair to assume nobody noticed.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#73

Post by pdimitar »

dcre wrote: post #72
pdimitar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits? How do you know he's thinking that? The way he was talking, I read him as "well it's obvious that nobody has stopped this behavior so it's fair to assume that not enough people noticed". Wouldn't you agree with that? > And here's one that's more subtle, so I don't b…

Workers have been agitating against this behavior for many decades, so no, I would not agree that it is fair to assume nobody noticed.

Well then. Maybe nobody in power noticed -- or if they did, they turned a blind eye to it.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#74

Post by andrewla »

justonepost wrote: post #65
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…

well, heuristics are made up of algorithms.

This is not true. A (bad) heuristic for search results might be "rank the documents by the total number of occurrences of each search term in that document".

That's not an algorithm -- that's a desired result. Similar to how "sorting a list" is a description of a class of algorithms; it gives no description of how a machine can accomplish that goal.

The difference between the heuristic above and "sort a list" is that the success criteria of the latter can be very well defined, whereas the heuristic presented is an attempt at approximating the desired result, which is something like "present the best search results first, for some meaning of best".

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#75

Post by cujic9 »

quotemstr wrote: post #32

Capitalism is the best thing that's ever happened to humanity. The author's ideological bias gets in the way of understanding.

It has certainly enabled more humans to exist. It has created way better conditions for many of those humans. And it has created unimaginable suffering for just as many humans.

I wouldn't get rid of capitalism, but I certainly wouldn't give it a superlative. It's kind of like saying that domestication is the best thing that has happened to chickens, cause look how many more of them there are, and wow some of them live on a free range.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#76

Post by dcre »

pdimitar wrote: post #73
dcre wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers have been agitating against this behavior for many decades, so no, I would not agree that it is fair to assume nobody noticed.

Well then. Maybe nobody in power noticed -- or if they did, they turned a blind eye to it.

It's perhaps instructive when people think "people" works as an abbreviation for "people in power".

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#77

Post by hasbroslasher »

Obviously the most controversial part of this is "capitalism is the first rogue AI" point. I will try to stay out of having an opinion on this, I just want to try to add colour to what he's saying.

First, in the classical "market" scenario, we're talking about little atomic firms, each with goals and hopes and dreams of profit. Each of these firms has some kind of "knowledge" and some kind of decision making apparatus. They all have some functionality. In a sense, these firms are like people - so much that our government treats them as such in many cases!

In many cases, a lot of these ideas and processes end up being the same, and when it is, we call it collective wisdom[0]or collective intelligence[1]. I won't go too deep into that.

So while financial markets and the firms that comprise them aren't exactly _machines_, they do display a form of intelligence different and sometimes more effective than our individual knowledge.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/collective_wisdom [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/collective_intelligence

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#78

Post by gmfawcett »

AlexandrB wrote: post #50
mfoy_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An "algorithm" is simply a way to do a thing based on a set of rules to be followed... of course it's ambiguous. Getting scared of anything that generic is silly. Might as well fear the outside because anything can happen out there!

Throughout most of history rules and laws were enforced by a combination of "the letter of the law" and "the spirit of the law". The latter being shorthand for the role of human discretion. Algorithms completely obliterate the latter - increasingly turning previously flexible systems into the equivalent of zero-tolerance-policy schools, where human discretion has no role to play. This is a problem because many laws o…

I write a faulty policy that harms people. I encode it as an algorithm, implement it as a program, and deploy it on a wide scale. Now it's automated and distributed, and it is harming people. Where is the fault --- in the program? in the algorithm? Or in the policy? Where do we fix the problem?

IMO, we are quick to blame inanimate constructs, when people and their policies are the source of fault. Vilifying "algorithms" only serves to distract from root causes.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#79

Post by ballenf »

pdimitar wrote: post #69
dcre wrote: post #64

Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits? "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…

> Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits? How do you know he's thinking that? The way he was talking, I read him as "well it's obvious that nobody has stopped this behavior so it's fair to assume that not enough people noticed". Wouldn't you agree with that? > And here's one that's more subtle, so I don't b…

>> Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits?

> How do you know he's thinking that?

From the article:

> 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.

His thinking on the point seems pretty clear and the parent seemed to summarize it pretty well. I had the same question upon reading it and thinking back to the very prominent criticism that companies like Domino's and other fast food operators were taking for cutting workers' hours below the 32-hour max to avoid health care costs.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#80

Post by jpster »

>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 face. An algorithm was really not needed to perceive this and it’s insulting and strange to suggest it.

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