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posted by CoolHand on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the oh-the-inhumanity-of-it-all dept.

Algorithms tell you how to vote. Algorithms can revoke your driver’s license and terminate your disability benefits. Algorithms predict crimes. Algorithms ensured you didn’t hear about #FreddieGray on Twitter. Algorithms are everywhere, and, to hear critics, they are trouble. What’s the problem? Critics allege that algorithms are opaque, automatic, emotionless, and impersonal, and that they separate decision-makers from the consequences of their actions. Algorithms cannot appreciate the context of structural discrimination, are trained on flawed datasets, and are ruining lives everywhere. There needs to be algorithmic accountability. Otherwise, who is to blame when a computational process suddenly deprives someone of his or her rights and livelihood?

But at heart, criticism of algorithmic decision-making makes an age-old argument about impersonal, automatic corporate and government bureaucracy. The machine like bureaucracy has simply become the machine. Instead of a quest for accountability, much of the rhetoric and discourse about algorithms amounts to a surrender—an unwillingness to fight the ideas and bureaucratic logic driving the algorithms that critics find so creepy and problematic. Algorithmic transparency and accountability can only be achieved if critics understand that transparency (no modifier is needed) is the issue. If the problem is that a bureaucratic system is impersonal, unaccountable, creepy, and has a flawed or biased decision criteria, then why fetishize and render mysterious the mere mechanical instrument of the system’s will ?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/05/algorithms_aren_t_responsible_for_the_cruelties_of_bureaucracy.single.html

 
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:51PM (#186030)

    Basically its the 'facebook feed' problem.

    Your friends are of a particular political ideal. So you maybe 'like' a couple of things they have to say (neither 'side' is that unreasonable on some issues). Suddenly your facebook feed slowly turns into that particular political persuasion. Basically it is the idea of marketing but done by your friends. But the computer decided maybe one of your other friends does not get as much time. Because you never 'liked' what he said because all he talked about was washers when you were more interested in grommets. But today your other friend is talking about grommets and has a good argument against them. But you never hear it. You have accidentally created an echo chamber.

    This is a case of lies, damn lies, and statistics. People are using these systems to make decisions. It is right 99.9% of the time. Which means for every 1000 there may be at least 1 wrong decision made. It takes a bit of time to realize that. So if you only make maybe 10 decisions a day to get to 1000 may take a few months. So it seems like the thing is always right. When you get off the bounds of what the decision engines are doing, the people who use them can not conceive of them being wrong.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @03:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @03:35PM (#186045)

    OK, but it's like direct mail. Since I'm a registered Democrat I get a flood of mail, not just from the DNC and various Democratic politicians soliciting contributions, but also from environmentalists like the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, etc. Some of them have names like "Bill Clinton" or "Michelle Obama" as the sender, and on the letterhead. Basically it all goes into the can. In other words, I can choose to ignore it, even though it was targeted based on the database on me.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @07:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @07:08PM (#186162)

      HA! I knew it. I get the same junk from the RNC.

      This is how you guys are spending the money we donate? Printing up thousands of pounds of GARBAGE!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by K_benzoate on Thursday May 21 2015, @05:53PM

    by K_benzoate (5036) on Thursday May 21 2015, @05:53PM (#186124)

    I know most people here hate Twitter, lumping it in with Facebook et al, but I actually liked it (until recently) for the reason you describe. Twitter didn't attempt to filter or curate your feed. You select which accounts to follow and you just get a real time firehose of everything they post.

    Now they're doing some basic filtering, ostensibly to help users avoid "harassment", which means you don't get to see everything. There's also no way to disable this "feature" and worse still they don't disclose exactly how they're filtering content out.

    --
    Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.