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Tech pioneers in the US are advocating a new data-based approach to governance - 'algorithmic regulation'. But if technology provides the answers to society's problems, what happens to governments ?
What is Algorithmic Regulation? Well, here and here are two attempts to explain it. For example: the "smartification" of everyday life follows a familiar pattern: there's primary data - a list of what's in your smart fridge and your bin - and metadata - a log of how often you open either of these things or when they communicate with one another. Both produce interesting insights: cue smart mattresses - one recent model promises to track respiration and heart rates and how much you move during the night - and smart utensils that provide nutritional advice.
In addition to making our lives more efficient, this smart world also presents us with an exciting political choice. If so much of our everyday behaviour is already captured, analysed and nudged, why stick with unempirical approaches to regulation? Why rely on laws when one has sensors and feedback mechanisms? If policy interventions are to be - to use the buzzwords of the day - "evidence-based" and "results-oriented," technology is here to help.
This new type of governance has a name: algorithmic regulation. In as much as Silicon Valley has a political programme, this is it. Tim O'Reilly, an influential technology publisher, venture capitalist and ideas man (he is to blame for popularising the term "web 2.0") has been its most enthusiastic promoter. In a recent essay that lays out his reasoning, O'Reilly makes an intriguing case for the virtues of algorithmic regulation - a case that deserves close scrutiny both for what it promises policy-makers and the simplistic assumptions it makes about politics, democracy and power.
To see algorithmic regulation at work, look no further than the spam filter in your email. Instead of confining itself to a narrow definition of spam, the email filter has its users teach it. Even Google can't write rules to cover all the ingenious innovations of professional spammers. What it can do, though, is teach the system what makes a good rule and spot when it's time to find another rule for finding a good rule - and so on. An algorithm can do this, but it's the constant real-time feedback from its users that allows the system to counter threats never envisioned by its designers. And it's not just spam: your bank uses similar methods to spot credit-card fraud.
Algorithmic regulation, whatever its immediate benefits, will give us a political regime where technology corporations and government bureaucrats call all the shots. The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, in a pointed critique of cybernetics published ,as it happens, roughly at the same time as The Automated State, put it best: "Society cannot give up the burden of having to decide about its own fate by sacrificing this freedom for the sake of the cybernetic regulator."
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @07:08PM
Data driven regulations are impossible because political coalitions particularly Black and Hispanic voters make this impossible.
For example, the NYPD reported that about 98% of murders and 95% of shootings were from Black and Hispanic suspects. Mayor Bloomberg cited this stat, which has been replicated at every major city, as justification for stop and frisk EVEN THOUGH it will disproportionately affect Black and Latino men.
Because Black and Latino Men commit the overwhelming majority of violent crimes. Not just in NYC, globally.
Asians for example in the NYPD crime stats don't even appear above 1% in shootings and murders and assaults. Whites are not that much higher.
An empirical, data driven approach to regulation would have stop and frisk to remove deadly weapons, guns and knives primarily, from Black and Latino street thugs, as most street thugs are Black and Latino. This will be an annoyance to law abiding Black and Latino men but will also greatly improve their safety; as they are also principal victims of Black and Latino thugs.
However Black and Latino VOTERS will side with their criminal relatives: cousins, sons, nephews, etc. (the vast proportion of street thugs once again are men) and kill stop and frisk by voting for politicians like Bill de Blasio who promise to abolish it.
Diversity and PC are a religion, and self-interest by White elites (Bill de Blasio being a good example) and Black/Hispanic voters in solidarity with criminal relatives that denies the reality in favor of feel-good or naked self interest nonsense. New York City was rescued from the constant, and seemingly inherent (absent DNA modification or Clockwork Orange behavior modification) criminality of Black and Hispanic lower class people. Which is the overwhelming majority of that racial/ethnic group. This is reality, it is not consistent with the universalist, idiot religion of PC and Diversity. But it is born out again and again by data. Asians are the least criminal, then Whites, then Hispanics, with Blacks the most criminal. This is true of overall crime rates and violent crime rates.
Recognizing that empirical reality is about as comfortable for those embracing a universalist, PC/Diversity religion as a sun-centric universe was for the Catholic Church in Galileo's time was, which wasn't very comfortable. We have our own Inquisitions and PC purges just like Renaissance Italy. Religion is all, combined with naked self-interest by relatives of Black and Hispanic criminals ("Don't put my nephew in jail!")
Various real estate data sites list: criminal activity, race, ethnicity, school ratings, etc. which are illegal under the Fair Housing Act for real estate agents to mention, and the DOJ under Eric Holder is considering prosecuting such sites as Zillow, etc.
So no, we will NEVER use data to conceive of regulations because it runs afoul of PC/Diversity and interests of the Black and Hispanic underclass.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Monday July 21 2014, @08:09PM
For example, the NYPD reported that about 98% of murders and 95% of shootings were from Black and Hispanic suspects.
Actually "Over 90%", not 98%.
But there's a bigger indicator than that. 93% were male. So unless you are suggesting random searches of males due to gender profiling, you shouldn't be suggesting racial profiling either.
Also, a true technocratic solution would see that the difference in crime stats for different races is a symptom, not a cause. The cause being income inequality. And would use taxation progressive taxation and other remedies to reduce that inequality.
Indeed you know deep down that income inequality is the problem, because you used the word "under-class". Class structures being based on wealth and power.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Monday July 21 2014, @08:39PM
Thank you for setting the troll straight.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @10:19PM
"you know deep down that income inequality is the problem"
Correlation != Causation
Is "knowing deep down" a technocratic thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @10:35PM
"income inequality is the problem" completely ignores the stats regarding Asians. Seems like cultural attitudes toward the value of education is a big factor in income inequality.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Monday July 21 2014, @09:05PM
There was a rather upbeat story about data-driven policing in Chicago [csmonitor.com] just this morning. If you read it, you will note a profound lack of race warfare in Chicago's approach. I considered submitting that story to Soylent but didn't because I figured the only comments it would get would be from racists like parent. (I hope he doesn't get modded down too far because sometimes offensive points of view contribute to the discussion and this is one of those times. You can't talk about crime without confronting prejudice.)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @11:30PM
And for a completely different perspective on the same program:
Chicago PD's Big Data: using pseudoscience to justify racial profiling [boingboing.net]
It's the myth that "algorithms" can't be racist when in fact the people who create a system imbue it with their own assumptions.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday July 22 2014, @12:06PM
Thank you for posting that.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.