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posted by on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the good-riddance dept.

Advertising as we’ve always known it — large-scale campaigns predicated on instilling subconscious intuition in consumers — will die. What will rise from its ashes [will] be unlike anything we’ve seen before. It will not condition us to select from a menu of mediocrity, as it has done for centuries. Rather, the algorithms buried within the walls of companies like Google and Facebook will deterministically present us with our best options for everything from dinner to marriage, given the troves of user data they have at their disposal. At first, consumers may rebel, like they did with the advent of GPS in cars, or online shopping [4]. But as they realize that they are better served by allowing algorithms to take care of the decisions they once relied on their own autonomy to make, they will make the shift. It will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

This new world will be marked by a monumental shift away from branding, which is already happening, a shift away from search, which is about to happen, but most important, and perhaps most unsettling, a shift away from trust in the user as the final indicator of their own desire. As we make this shift, and move towards a world in which data — and the mastery of its use — is king, ads will become deterministic. The companies that define this future will master the use of consumer data to inform ad delivery, and as they continue to amass user data, both their advertisements — and in turn, their data — will improve in tandem, until both are perfect. As this happens — and it will be a process, given that new consumers enter the world by the hundreds of thousands every day — our world will become one in which every consumer will be deterministically paired both with what they want, and what they need. In this new world, whether there will even be a difference is far from clear.

"every consumer will be deterministically paired both with what they want, and what they need."


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Kunasou on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:26AM (8 children)

    by Kunasou (4148) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:26AM (#485767)

    I was reading the article until they said this:
    "But as they realize that they are better served by allowing algorithms to take care of the decisions they once relied on their own autonomy to make, they will make the shift."
    Well, they just want slaves that do anything a computer tells them to do. That includes spending money of course. And that's really sad.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:44AM (5 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:44AM (#485775) Journal

    What they haven't counted on is when people realize that the algorithm creators have insufficient clue because not everybody is a cookie cutter person.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:52PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:52PM (#485924) Journal

      You're assuming that in this future the algorithm creators will be human.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:23AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:23AM (#486303)

        Remind me, why are there humans?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:25PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:25PM (#486066)

      > because not everybody is a cookie cutter person.

      "you're all individuals!"
      "I'm not!"

      People are different in ways that don't matter. Go ahead and chose the other cookies, they're also made by Nabisco, and so is the flour if you'd rather bake your own.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:54PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:54PM (#486147)

      Who says the algorithms won't become sophisticated enough to understand preferences and individuality? Some of these selection algorithms are already at work all over the web and data science is still in its infancy.

      The way this story is phrased is excellent at pushing the "I'm a human who must have self-determination" outrage button. Free will was always an illusion, it's just that our compulsive pursuit of it was somewhat well aligned with rational outcomes. You'll still think you control things in the future, it will just be different things. We've got millennia of history to show that humans will cede control over things to society and stop thinking of those things as important rights. If you don't become such a person, your children will, and they'll think you're a fuddy duddy.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:13PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:13PM (#486499) Journal

        I'm sorry, but I'll tend to find the limits of the illusionary freedom quite quickly. And preferences are different enough to always be reminded of what's mainstream and not. Algorithms tend to rely on masses of data pointing in the same direction. If isn't. Then it fails.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:09AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:09AM (#485797) Journal

    Well, they just want slaves that do anything a computer tells them to do.

    Drones, my good sir, drones not slaves.

    We aren't using slaves for quite a bit of time; too dangerous and expensive, you see? Many of these slaves are capable of independent thinking and physical constraints to keep them... umm... in chains are quite expensive (law enforcement, security theatres, jails, ubiquitous surveillance, hacking, etc)
    On the other side, building the citizens' trust in the machine is a mild form of brain bleaching - quite easy to condition the subjects and foolproof afterwards: they won't know any better.
    There was an author, Orwell, who demonstrated in a well written treaty that "The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.".
    Well, we won't go that far... in the beginning.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:57PM (#485929)

      On the other side, building the citizens' trust in the machine is a mild form of brain bleaching

      Brain Bleaching.
      That, good sir, is a beautiful expression. Thank you for that!