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Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

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Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#81

Post by munificent »

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.

No, people in power — the CEOs of those companies — did notice. It is a feature, not a bug, from their perspective. It makes the employees cheaper since they don't need to be provided benefits.

I don't see how an automated implementation of the same feature/bug is an improvement over the manual implementation. Either way, it's a deliberate choice that minimizes the value provided to one set of people (low-level employees) and maximizes the value to others (shareholders and executives).

I don't see how using automation and AI to increase the efficiency of transferring money from the poor to the rich is an improvement.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#82

Post by jefurii »

> For more than two decades, Tim O’Reilly has been the conscience of the tech industry. ...he was among the first to perceive both the societal and commercial value of the internet [and] ... he drew upon his education in the classics to apply a moral yardstick to what was happening in tech.

Writer hasn't heard of Richard Stallman?

Update: writer is Steven Levy, who most definitely has heard of Stallman, and should know better.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#83

Post by TorKlingberg »

fiblye wrote: post #9
Iv wrote: post #2

Sorry but it is hard to take seriously someone who thinks AI and automation won't take away jobs. They will and it is a good thing.

Even assuming we end up with some society where robots do most of the labor and universal basic income becomes a thing, what do you think 90% of people will do? People need to be occupied, and the typical person isn't an inventor or artist. Furthermore, good luck making kids want to go to school when they see it as pointless since they can just get everything free from the robots while they watch TV. If you think obe…

I think the current theory is: play video games.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#84

Post by pdimitar »

dcre wrote: post #76
pdimitar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Theoretically, democracy tells us all people should be people in power but we're seeing how well it works in practice, right?

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#85

Post by pdimitar »

munificent wrote: post #81
pdimitar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, people in power — the CEOs of those companies — did notice. It is a feature, not a bug, from their perspective. It makes the employees cheaper since they don't need to be provided benefits. I don't see how an automated implementation of the same feature/bug is an improvement over the manual implementation. Either way, it's a deliberate choice that minimizes the value provided to one set of people (low-level emplo…

Agreed. That's what I was implying -- CEOs want to reduce expenses and eliminate the human error factor, not to make the world better place for workers.

Automation only made these problems easier to increase. Sadly it was almost never used to actually improve people's lives. :(

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#87

Post by pdimitar »

ballenf wrote: post #79
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…

>> 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…

As I said in the other arm of this mini comment thread: I am pretty sure most of the planet knew of the potential for these nasty tactics but the handful of people who could've done something chose to turn blind eye to it because it serves their financial interests and job security plans.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#88

Post by JustSomeNobody »

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…

> 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?

I wouldn't. Anyone... everyone... who's worked retail _knows_ this. Anyone who's worked retail management knows this because when you ask to hire people you're told to hire part timers. Two part timers is always better than a full timer, you're told. This is NOT invisible to anyone. It's simply unspoken.

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#89

Post by [deleted] »

andrewla wrote: post #74
justonepost wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue

#90

Post by noxToken »

andrewla wrote: post #74
justonepost wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>"rank the documents by the total number of occurrences of each search term in that document"

I fail to see how this is not an algorithm. The heuristic (rank search results from most to least relevant) is backed by an algorithm (find occurrence of word, sort document based on occurrences). I like to approximate the two by thinking of heuristics as an approach to solving a given problem while algorithms are actions to taken to get to the end results.

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