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Amazon 'Reviewing' Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon said on Wednesday that it was reviewing its website after a British television report said the online retail giant's algorithms were automatically suggesting bomb-making ingredients that were "Frequently bought together." The news is particularly timely in Britain, where the authorities are investigating a terrorist attack last week on London's Underground subway system. The attack involved a crude explosive in a bucket inside a plastic bag, and detonated on a train during the morning rush. The news report is the latest example of a technology company drawing criticism for an apparently faulty algorithm. Google and Facebook have come under fire for allowing advertisers to direct ads to users who searched for, or expressed interest in, racist sentiments and hate speech. Growing awareness of these automated systems has been accompanied by calls for tech firms to take more responsibility for the contents on their sites. Amazon customers buying products that were innocent enough on their own, like cooking ingredients, received "Frequently bought together" prompts for other items that would help them produce explosives, according to the Channel 4 News.
In recent days amazon has been found to be deleting reviews of Hillary Clinton book that are negative - they justify this by saying that "no one could have read the book that fast" yet they don't block the great reviews from people who have had the same amount of access to the book as the negative reviewers.
If you take away the ability of people to speak freely, leaving them with the perception of censorship***, they will find other, very terrible ways to communicate their thoughts...and suggesting bombs at the same time is something that is actually genuinely frightening.
***I know amazon is not a government and therefore cant "censor" but it can give the perception thereof because of the sheer power they do hold.
I don't understand how this isn't just Amazon showing articles from a hardware store, rather than, well gee there are soooo many people making this stuff that the algorithm has learnt the specific components.
The algorithm isn't faulty. It works exactly as designed. But it is also completely blind to the deeper meaning of the result. Take this as a cautionary tale against all software-augmented decision making. Software is not inherently fair and impartial. It just blindly follows a rigid set of rules that don't include any moral values. And sometimes, the developer may have even made the rules intentionally malicious.
You would think they would be more concerned with why so many people are buying these items together that the algorithm is showing them as frequently bought together.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
The surprising thing is that enough people were buying bomb-making ingredients together to train their algorithm. Most things that you use to make bombs are dual-use items, and I'd expect a lot more people to have been buying them to not make bombs than were buying them to make bombs.
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Exactly, the algorithm is working perfectly. Since people aren't blowing up buildings left and right and yet are making bomb making stuff, maybe the people in the UK should work on desensitizing themselves to things that are done a regular basis both for practical reasons and recreation. Here in the US (where Amazon is based) we have a massive rural population and blowing stumps and the like is just daily life for those folks. For most things that is just fine and legal so long as they don't transport and for things where it isn't entirely legal... lets just say if he isn't getting anything too crazy, stockpiling anything, or hurting anyone then whatever levy Farmer John is moving or refrigerator he's blowing up on his back 40 or personal firing range is somewhere near the bottom of the list for federal agents, especially since he has a legitimate reason to buy big bags of fertilizer and large quantities of diesel and it isn't the easiest thing in the world detect if he were using something a big bigger to blow a stump.