The algorithm myth: why the bots won’t take over

spectator.co.uk

4 pointshhs3 comments

We hear that "the bots are dumb so they will never take over" a lot. But in a way they already have. All the major social media companies use algorithms to control what people consume. Something that has a great impact in the real world. Finance is highly automated. Computer automation is all over the place. It's true there is no super AI around the corner but we have thousands of dumb bots that are controlling us already. They are only increasing.

> It's true there is no super AI around the corner but we have thousands of dumb bots that are controlling us already. They are only increasing.

The article does acknowledge this:

> “What scares him is our own passivity. ‘We should be worried about people who aren’t getting smart while technology gets smarter,’ Gigerenzer says. ‘The more sophisticated algorithms become, the more sophisticated people need to become… The algorithms have become better over the last ten years by sheer computational powers, by the video capabilities and other things.”

Interesting, I was so focused on the super AI theory that I missed the point of the article. His warning is about the dumb bots and how they are being used/misused.

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