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by allochthon
4540 days ago
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Gen X'er here. Not so sure about many of the points of the article, but this one was interesting: The problem is that in twenty to thirty years, when our youngest generation grows up and takes charge of government and business, its members will have grown up using Facebook, prescription drugs or online support groups as their primary coping mechanisms rather than relying on real support groups: biological bonds of friendship and loving relationships. This dovetails with my recent fascination/great unease at learning that Twitter uses Mechanical Turk (an Amazon service I didn't know much about) to program what appears to be a disposable, no-strings-attached human workforce, using an API, to do some categorization for it (a very clever idea I should say); and with my great unease with companies like IBM wanting to track metrics of every kind about their workforce. As the younger kids begin to assume decisionmaking responsibility, is their acclimation to living in this human/computer ecosystem going to open the floodgates to full-on human "programming" (to give the dystopian edge-case a name)? Are computers and the developers and statisticians programming them going to invade every corner of our lives? Consider OkCupid (a fine Web site). Their algorithms are important for selecting possible matches. How much trust are we putting in those algorithms and in the implementation? These map-reduce jobs (or whatever they use) are now programming to some extent the reproduction of a portion of society. Are we going to see this trend go off the charts? |
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Ok, stats and anecdotes aside, this is straight creepy to me. I agree with you, it seems that the programmer is becoming the only real job left. If some dating algo can do a better job than yourself ever could, the only logical choice is to use that algo. But, dammit, its so freaking sterile to me! Yeah, I am old fashioned here, but having a computer say that I am a better match and will have, statistically, a better life with $person is terrible. I have no control of my life then! This person that I might have children with was not chosen by me. Rather, I chose to reject the algo or roll the dice again.
A recent video produced by "A studio on Fuxing Road" contrasts the Brittish, US, and Chinese election systems[4]. The piece is very pro communist. It glorifies the system of paperwork that insures good governance of China and says this is cheaper and better than the way the US does it. To me, it's bullshit. Even if the 'algo' they used worked and was not corrupt, hell, even if it worked better than democracy, it's still Bullshit. I have a right to say to whom I give my consent to govern me. Everyone has that right. Even if the 'algo' get better than I can ever be, I have to give consent explicitly. I have to know and be informed. I can't stand just rolling over to have the 'algos' determine my fate for me. I can see where it is better for society and for the planet that the algos get the control and we just ride along. But I really don't want that.
Sorry, that derailed there. But I hope you see where I was going. I, too, fear that the programmer, in their data driven wisdom, will step too far.
[1]Unfortunately, offline now: http://contently.com/strategist/2013/08/19/whatever-happened... [2]http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-i-learned-from-worst-on... [3]http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222447110 [4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M734o_17H_A