*Yeah, yeah. Greek, Latin, who cares?

Sunday, August 28, 2011

A Luddite at the BBC

An alleged "Technology Reporter" at the BBC has an absolutely atrocious article about the doom we're all facing from algorithms that are taking over the world.

The first example given is the multi-million dollar used book on Amazon (which I covered in my last post). The "reporter" couldn't even do enough due-diligence journalism to realize that these weren't Amazon's fancy algorithms, but amateur algorithms (one more so than the other) by the used-book sellers. Is it important (to those people) that they know what they're doing? Sure. But it didn't affect anyone else because nobody was dumb enough to buy it.

That's followed by a series of other stupid and/or fear-mongering examples:

Movie-making decisions? If those algorithms go awry, we end up with crappy movies. Is that a new thing?

Google uses secret algorithms to determine which advertisements we see? Does anybody actually pay attention to those ads? If so, are they harmed if they don't get ads that make sense for them? The real concern here is supposed to be data harvesting...which has essentially nothing to do with these supposedly smart algorithms, and is only alluded to in the article.

We've stopped remembering things? We've only been doing that more and more since writing was invented. (If one hasn't seen it, Episode 4 of James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed series--also from the BBC, I should note...from 1985...is excellent on this issue relative to the printing press.) On the more specific issue, of whether search-engines are good or bad, though, I'm with Ta-Nehisi Coates' NY Times op-ed.

Computer-driven trades at the NY Stock Exchange. Doesn't anyone remember 1987? Whether such trades were at fault then or not (it's still not clear), this isn't a new concern, means of dealing with such things have been being developed since then...and unlike a "real" crash due to an asset bubble (e.g. 1929 or 2008), a mistaken crash is far less of a serious problem. Note how quick the recovery was in the 2010 'crash'.

Finally, the last line of the article is so stupid I have to quote it:

As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.

Algorithms are spreading their influence? Umm, no. We are spreading our use of algorithms. Work out how much they know? By definition, algorithms don't know anything (except in the sense that they embody a "how"). If you want to fear-monger about databases in the hands of incompetents and malefactors, that's a different story. Whether we still have time to tame them? I can't even begin to describe how clueless that is. Maybe we need to tame the people using the algorithms, but tame the algorithms themselves? I don't even know what that could mean.

I think what most pissed me off about the article is the total lack of any awareness that algorithms could ever be good. The algorithms on the computer that helps my car's engine burn fuel more efficiently? The algorithms used to model organic chemistry and speed the discovery or invention of new medicines? The algorithms that run and interpret the data in an MRI machine? The algorithms that keep airplanes from crashing into each other? The algorithms that allow food distributors to keep people in cities like New York and London fed (both cities typically have less than 48 hours of food on hand)? The algorithms that put a huge fraction of human knowledge and entertainment just a few keystrokes away from anyone wealthy enough to have an internet connection?

As an aside, I'd also like to point out that the used-book-price algorithms, at least, are certainly simpler than the ones used by the software the author wrote her article on.

Every technology has its potential downsides. We've been dealing with that since the first tool was invented. The opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey are hilariously inaccurate to an anthropologist (I've always particularly loved the use of tapirs as ancient African prey animals, though that's one of the smallest problems), but are a familiar reminder of how deep an issue this is. Computers are just the latest tool that not everyone is comfortable with. Playing on those fears, whether out of malice or ignorance, is not something I expected of the BBC.