Do you remember the good old times when your social network served you content by chronological order? Not long ago there was a time when you had to had to click a few times more in order to find something that you would like to buy, watch or listen to.
Of course, things are changing way too fast these days. Better devices and faster connection speed grooms us for instant gratification. Nowadays everything is structured in a more personalized approach. Social network news feeds serve you updates from the persons or accounts that you interacted with most. Social media has allowed everyone to become content creator, whether they are now publishing their own web series on YouTube or just regularly posting ephemeral bite-sized clips on Instagram or Snapchat. With shortened attention span and the surplus of content, many aspects of our lives depended on algorithms that enable us to save time and have our favorite platforms serve us recommended content based on our consumption behavior.
Take a look around and you’ll see many products around us rely heavily on algorithm, whether that be our social networking sites, our music streaming service or even our video on-demand platforms. They claim that the algorithms around us are a hybrid between our consumption data blended with the sophistication (or lack thereof) of artificial intelligence. Our Instagram and Facebook news feeds are showing content based on our previous interactions and reactions. Upon logging in Netflix immediately shows us a playlist dubbed “Top Picks for Nina” to provide number of movies and TV shows that they thought I might like. Convenience? Yes. Lazy? Yes. Dangerous? Possibly.
Consider it a blessing to have endless amount of content at your fingertips for your consumption in an instant. In 2018 Netflix alone has about 5,599 titles indexed in its library — how do you think you’re going to comb through the mountains of content to find what you feel like watching on that specific amount of time? I for one am enjoying Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlist that refreshes itself every Monday to serve you a set of tracks based on your listening history on the previous week. Otherwise I’ll probably drown and tear my hair apart overwhelmed by analysis paralysis.
The advancement of technology around us allows providers to accumulate various pool of data and use them to make our experiences better — or that’s what we want to believe. However, there has been some concerns in regards to how these algorithms are actually crippling our lives.
Are we really just an algorithm?
In high school a lot of mymandatory reading revolves around dystopian novels such as Farenheit 451, Brave New World or 1984. I suppose these reading materials are supposed to teach us the dangers of authoritative totalitarianism and ignite critical thinking among us in regards to human rights and freedom of voicing our thoughts and attaining knowledge. However I can’t help but to get creeped out as a lot of these dystopian literature shows that mankind is degraded to nothing but serial numbers and we are not entitled to even have our own names and/or identities — moreover any basic rights.
Fast forward around at a few decades after the book was written, our society today is starting to take the mold of what these authors depict back in their novels. I might be exaggerating but this brings the first question whether we are merely an algorithm, a tiny speck of — at most, a gigabyte of data — stored somewhere in a vast, server farm somewhere?
Do we really have a choice at all?
If you take an example as when you read your Kindle or e-reader, it’s not just you consuming the books presented through these devices — they are also studying you. For now it can be as simple as your browsing history, highlighted texts in your bookmarks, books purchased and what are some of the authors you follow. But think about as technology advances, sooner or later it will be able to detect your emotions as you read a piece of content and gather this data. These information gathered by our devices will soon be able to pick and predict content and items according to our preferences, moods, interest and more.
While the idea of having to eliminate the step of browsing and selecting through a mass amount of content can definitely be an advantage in many ways (saving time, ability to discover new content, etc), it is also crippling us. As humans who were originally hunters and gatherers, we are starting to be lazy, complacent and dependent on algorithms. Why have we become so trusting that these recommendations supposedly is in accordance to our preference? Are we succumbing to the fact that our lives are now dictated by algorithms — the things we watch, listen to, read, shop, eat, date? In the long run, would this be detrimental to our ability to independently make our own selections out of reasoning, knowledge and logic?
Is algorithm superior than human knowledge and judgment?
Simply no. Sure, even in today’s time machine learning and AI is near its peak advancement but it is still not perfect. There have been times when algorithms are biased to special cases or anomalies. Take example last year’s Google’s Photo Recognition fiasco where they mislabelled two black people as Gorillas, causing an uproar for the tech community worldwide for claims of racism.
Speaking of racist AIs, do you remember Microsoft’s chatbot Tay that initially comes as a wholesome and innocent chatbot but ends up saluting Hitler, saying sexist slurs and says other offensive things? Because the internet is filled with generally weird and some hateful people, the machine learning behind Tay’s code picks up all the hateful phrases said to her and she manifests and embodies them to be her daily speak — turning her into the most crude talking chatbot (so far in history).
Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning… what do we do with them?
Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens, mentioned that all organisms are algorithms as we are all manifestations of the iterations of evolution. So me, you, or the giraffe in the Singapore Zoo are all just algorithms — biologically speaking. Even at this point machines and humankind are at the verge of convergence as our intelligence are quickly blurred as machines are able to write its own code and make judgment, similar to humankind.
Know that everyone is harvesting our data to either improve our user experience or sell them to interested parties but you have to know your rights. In a way, privacy is dead anyway. The moment you’re connected to the internet you are submitting fragments of your identity and your consumption behaviour. Even through the smartphone which tracks every single one of your movements, your habits, your conversations through your apps. To be fair — if you’re not doing anything illegal there is nothing to be worried about. But if you want to completely go off-grid, i suggest you move somewhere in the middle of nowhere with a bag of cash and hunt your own food cause everywhere these days is connected anyway.
In a way it’s not entirely wrong and algorithms in our daily routines have improved many of our lives. However, as individuals we still need to exercise the reasoning behind our choices and preferences instead of relying it to a computer. We need to be aware in how the options presented to us and be vigilant in how the algorithm is formed. Us as humankind can’t let ourselves be outsmarted by mere series of codes.
In a world full of choices, options, content, we can partially rely on algorithms to serve us options but we must use it in tandem with our knowledge and freedom to choose.
