An algorithm as your boss
Preferable to humans?
At a recent geeky dinner party we were discussing intelligent personal assistants like Google Now and I posed the question “Would you prefer an algorithm as your boss?”
The ability of human beings to behave rationally is notoriously subject to a whole host of preconditions; the drive to work, flakiness of memory, hunger, the weather or even the current phase of the moon. As an employee, why then would you want to chance that yearly review and salary discussion with your boss to this lottery of uncontrollable factors?
If it was possible to design a perfect algorithm capable of being as good as your boss on his or her best day, wouldn’t it be better than dealing with an irrational human? It would have access to all the data, knowing exactly how well you performed over the year and of course be primed to acted as brilliant mentor and motivator,knowing how to get the best out of you at all times. More to the point it would be capable of making millions of decisions every second. No more having to hunt your boss down to check they actually read that E-Mail you sent them; we’re talking immediate and smart response to any question you need answering.
One or two of the guests at the dinner party seemed half way persuaded, though sadly their opinion was drowned by the others who were horrified by the concept; “Who designs the algorithm?”, “How would I know what the algorithms motivation is?” and “How can I negotiate with a computer?”. Based on this tiny sample, the majority of us are not ready for the idea of being run by algorithms.
Out of interest I challenged the nay-sayers with another question; “When you wake up in the morning, how long is before you get online to read news, twitter, facebook etc.?”. The answer was an embarrassed “Ummm… less than 60 seconds.”
