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> You don't need to live in some company's digital ecosystem. I don't. I own my own photos, and Apple are not getting any facial recognition features out of them.

Workers, patients, and customers don't get this choice. I work on hospital systems that use "AI" and we wouldn't survive a proper code audit for what we claim saves lives. We get audited by the FDA, but they aren't combing through our code - just the documentation that we write.

Sure, we describe the algorithms put together by our researchers, but even the rank-and-file developers mostly just consume the algorithms that decide what to tell Doctors taking care of the patients.

For now, at least, Doctors and Nurses mostly use our software as a retrospective tool. I know we're not selling it that way and I worry about the day folks are using this system in place of their years of experience.

The statistics we put out say our software is x% better than the Doctor at making these decisions, is that true? Who knows, but an audit to make sure we're not selling snake oil might save lives.

> Everything that does anything is an algorithm. Will we have to get government authorisation before we can quicksort?

This just sounds like a strawman argument. If you say, 'our proprietary algorithm will save thousands of lives from malpractice,' you better be ready to back that up with an audit. It better not be a bridge that's going to fall apart when an eighteen wheeler travels across it for the first time.

A code-level government audit of all life-critical software sounds impractical. There are already millions of lines of code in production on FDA approved devices (e.g. pacemakers?) so I am sure that standards and certification processes around this already exist.

> This should be restricted to anything making decisions based on personal information, if it is to be implemented at all.

Why would you exclude safety-relevant systems, e.g. in the autonomous driving / autonomous flying / industrial control space?

I don't think there's a need to regulate that beyond how it is already regulated.

If you are negligent or malicious, I'm pretty sure you're already liable for any harm caused.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone at Uber being held liable after the Uber car crash (in which Uber disabled the software's capability to do an emergency stop, which is certainly negligent).

> For someone who is clearly a strong proponent of privacy, it's disappointing that she doesn't even bring up the prospect of opting out of these companies.

Because for many it simply isn't an option. A lot of people need to interact with those platforms for their work or to stay in touch with their social circle. Even if not, it requires technical expertise to find and use alternatives, something that a lot of people don't have.

There was a time when basic literacy required a level of expertise that most people didn't have, the answer wasn't to start highly regulating those who do have the expertise, the answer was for people to learn.

That analogy does not work. The discussion is about regulating those who can exploit the lack of expertise. Whether or not you have expertise is orthogonal.

To stay with the example, in a world where few people can read but dealing with knowledge written in books is essential for many, it would make sense to regulate lecturers.

"Maybe a good idea, maybe not, but targetting "algorithms" is certainly too broad. Everything that does anything is an algorithm. Will we have to get government authorisation before we can quicksort?"

I agree that the word "algorithm" is used in an unusual meaning here, but I don't think we have a good alternative. It's probably a lost cause at this point, like with "hacker". Possible option is to use qualifier, like "decision-making algorithm" (similarly to how people now use "blackhat hacker").

"For someone who is clearly a strong proponent of privacy, it's disappointing that she doesn't even bring up the prospect of opting out of these companies."

I find her FDA analogy very compelling. (Despite the fact that I largely agree with Cyberspace Manifesto.) I mean, without FDA, it's very difficult to opt out of a restaurant that serves bad food, without somebody getting hurt. Maybe you can say, well, then don't go to restaurants and make your own food. Sure, then you will eventually end up removing yourself from civilization entirely.

The reason it is different to the FDA is because a restaurant can't exist without serving food, whereas a company providing a camera app can exist without running facial recognition algorithms on the photos that are taken.

And "opting out" of the data-harvesting companies isn't akin to removing yourself from civilisation. You can still have photos, you just keep them on your own storage and don't give them to data-harvesting companies.

I listen the audio book, some things that I learned and I did not know before:

- there are algorithms used in justice to determine some risks, so you getting a lower bail or a longer sentence is decided by an algorithm and some of this algorithms can be proprietary,racists and unfair.

- I do not recall all the details but a judge was identified and his web surfing was identified only by using the ad tacking systems, this was done by some reasearchers but some bad guys could potentially blackmail important people

- there were some interesting stories about people that used genetic test services, if your relative use those you are part indirectly in the data collection

- I forgot the details but in some case after some lawsuit the proprietary algorithm was revealed to be an Excel spreadsheat and it had some mistakes or unfair data in it

There were some good examples where AI strengths were combined with human strengths and the results were improved.

Large problems happen when the human blindly trusts the computer and almost drive over cliffs.

> Large problems happen when the human blindly trusts the computer and almost drive over cliffs.

I remember when car navigation systems were a new thing and there were frequent news reports of people who drove into rivers or lakes because the navigation system told them to cross the water, but not that the crossing happens by ferry (rather than via a bridge).

Other case mentioned was with face recognition, imagine a coop trusts the AI that tells him that you are a dangerous criminal, you could get killed if you are unfortunate because the cop could assume the computer is right and you are very dangerous and never thinks about the false positives

> Maybe a good idea, maybe not, but targetting "algorithms" is certainly too broad. Everything that does anything is an algorithm. Will we have to get government authorisation before we can quicksort?

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I fear the "You know what I meant!" paradigm.

"Of course you won't have to register every algorithm. You know what I meant!"

"Of course you won't have to submit every program to approval. You know what I meant!"

"Of course you don't have to worry if you got sufficient consent to use that information. You know what I meant!"

And so on. The gag, of course, is that nobody really knows what They meant, only that there's now this massive chill upon the land because nobody wants to be the first test case for the system to demonstrate What They Meant on.

You can have a law that only affects algorithms used by the state in education,medicine, police and justice, this algorithms should be fully open or at least properly checked to be correct. Also the people using this algorithms need to be trained not to blindly trust the computer, they need to learn the failure cases.

> it's disappointing that she doesn't even bring up the prospect of opting out of these companies.

Hear hear. The lack of this in such articles makes me feel this is less of a grassroots boycott and more of a political hatred for consumer information tech companies.

> This should be restricted to anything making decisions based on personal information

It strikes me that the most obvious thing the US needs is some version of GDPR. It's a much better framework than some vague "regulator of algorithms".

The book contains more then the private personal data topic that we discuss here, a topic mentioned that I never seen here on HN is the algorithms used in justice.