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Machine Logic: Our Lives Are Ruled By Big Tech's 'Decisions By Data' (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the changing-lives dept.

With the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are increasingly moving to a world where many decisions around us are shaped by calculations rather than traditional human judgement. The Guardian, citing many industry experts, reminds us that these technologies filter who and what counts, including "who is released from jail, and what kind of treatment you will get in hospital." A digital media professor said, these digital companies allow us to act, but in a very fine-grained, datafied, algorithm-ready way. "They put life to work, by rendering life in Taylorist data points that can be counted and measured" From the report (edited and condensed): Jose van Dijck, president of the Dutch Royal Academy and the conference's keynote speaker, expands further. Datification is the core logic of what she calls "the platform society," in which companies bypass traditional institutions, norms and codes by promising something better and more efficient -- appealing deceptively to public values, while obscuring private gain. Van Dijck and peers have nascent, urgent ideas. They commence with a pressing agenda for strong interdisciplinary research -- something Kate Crawford is spearheading at Microsoft Research, as are many other institutions, including the new Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. There's the old theory to confront, that this is a conscious move on the part of consumers and, if so, there's always a theoretical opt-out. Yet even digital activists plot by Gmail, concedes Fieke Jansen of the Berlin-based advocacy organisation Tactical Tech. The Big Five tech companies, as well as the extremely concentrated sources of finance behind them, are at the vanguard of "a society of centralized power and wealth. "How did we let it get this far?" she asks. Crawford says there are very practical reasons why tech companies have become so powerful. "We're trying to put so much responsibility on to individuals to step away from the 'evil platforms,' whereas in reality, there are so many reasons why people can't. The opportunity costs to employment, to their friends, to their families, are so high" she says.

7 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. "How did we let it get this far?" she asks? by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    Simple - *Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death*

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. Bring On The AI by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Indeed, the biggest problem with this article is that it starts out from a base assumption that is flawed - that for some unknown reason, human "moral judgement" is superior to that of an algorithm based on big data, without giving any logical reason WHY we should trust humans more.

    However, given the way humans act around the world globally - on average I would take a machine's judgement over a human's judgement any day of the weekm

    1. Re:Bring On The AI by Empiric · · Score: 2

      The problem is that what to "solve for" is something the machine can't self-determine. It's not a function of the data or the computer, it will always be specified by humans.

      The data itself can support "optimize for broadest human compassionate benefit" or "optimize for greatest profit"--which is better as an objective, is a value judgment. Guess which one developers are going to be told by corporate management to code for?

      --
      ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
    2. Re:Bring On The AI by sjames · · Score: 2

      Here's a hint. HUMANS wrote the software. However, unlike the flawed humans making the decision openly where they might be vaguely accountable and where some may be willing to do the right thing, the bad human thinking that writes the software gets to hide behind the machine and never even has to see the consequences of it's flaws.

    3. Re:Bring On The AI by akozakie · · Score: 2

      You use the words "algorithm based in big data" as if they had intrinsic value. They don't, period. The data - a great foundation, but the algorithm is human-made.

      Afraid of machines? Not really. We're not really making any progress towards machines having any sort of free will. I'm afraid of generation gap.

      At the moment we have a certain view of the world. This shapes our goals and interpretations. That shapes the algorithms we create. Goal functions. Criteria. Queries.

      Now, bugs aside, those algorithms will do exactly what they were designed to do. The point is, we're not nearly infallible. The goals we set now are our best current guesses about what matters. If we're short-term satisfied with the results of passing the responsibility for something to computers, we're going to just let them do it and never look back.

      Now, the world of the next generation (not really, could be 5 years apart) includes goals of the previous one implemented as core services, as the ground truth. Any mistakes of the previous one become hard to fix - you'd have to deactivate something that by now is a crucial service and rebuild it from scratch, with new goals. Not likely, there are layers and layers of useful utilities built on this, revenue streams, etc.

      In short - passing decisions to algorithms working on big data restricts our future flexibility. The algorithms are there as decision support, that's how it should be. Do not automate strategic decision making. Humans can realize they are wrong, algorithms can't, because, really, they're not - they do what they were designed to do, period. With our tendency to build new technology, processes, etc. on existing solutions if they seem to work well, that creates future dependencies which make error correction very difficult and costly.

      The science-fiction scenarios about humans as slaves to machines are likely pure fantasy. Slaves to ancient ideas of how things should be, enforced by machines... now that's much more realistic.

  3. Insurance is cancelled by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The AI says your projected lifetime earnings are too small to pay off your projected lifetime debt. You die now.

    Your lifetime total health insurance premiums won't cover the remaining medical costs from your car accident, your policy is hereby cancelled.

    1. Re:Insurance is cancelled by NotInHere · · Score: 2

      Sorry, but I think right now machines are not the thing one should fear. Its still humans. Maybe they will use machines to express their power, and then those machines will surely be scary, but I doubt that AI will enslave humans without actually having some root ssh terminal or similar to an actual human controlling it. At least not in this stage of our civilisation.