Let’s stop wasting time by attributing personality to algorithms
We have come to believe that algorithms somehow do things better than people, but then, as Arthur C. Clarke said, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. In short, widespread ignorance about what an algorithm is has led to widespread misunderstanding of what they can do, a subject I have already written about on other occasions.
There seem to be two extremes about algorithms: many people are fearful and distrustful of them; while others believe they inherently perform better than humans. In the middle is a (hopefully growing) number of people who understand that algorithms are only as good or bad as the data we train them with.
There are a growing number of easy to use algorithms, such as those that draw illustrations based on a brief description, and that have access to a huge database of illustrations that have been previously labeled according to their content. If we ask an algorithm to draw a particular character, what does the algorithm do? It simply goes to its database, locates all the illustrations labeled…
