There is a decision being made about you, but you’re not allowed to look | Hacker News Reader

There is a decision being made about you, but you’re not allowed to look

abc.net.au

37 pointstony-allan4 comments

I normally despise scroll hijacking and immediately close that page. But this page hooked me, because it was so well done and i stayed till the end.

Im thinking about chatgpt (yes again this topic), will it also have problems like this algorithm? Will it also steer into one direction when it gets trained on the WWW again after every page has been flooded with chatgpt replies? Or will this be feathered by the user up-/downvoting responses and giving feedback?

Whenever I read an article like this, I am reminded of this old article by Adam Elkus [0]:

"It’s problematic to examine algorithms as anything except the formalization and realization of procedures and stratagems that predate Python or R analytics code. “Algorithmic accountability” crusaders are talking about entrenched sociopolitical problems without really talking about them; computers become scapegoats for undesired features of capitalism, bureaucracy, and politics."

[0]: https://slate.com/technology/2015/05/algorithms-arent-respon...

I think that's absolutely true; it's easy to demonize the algorithm itself which is, when all's said and done, just dumb code with a heck of a lot of "if" statements. The problem is generally systemic, and worse still, it's often financial: algorithms are a way to make plausible things that otherwise wouldn't be possible within financial and time constraints. They are, at best, shortcuts. The problem is, increasingly, they are being used as blunt, impersonal instruments in situations that require humanity, or compassion - they let governments and corporations disassociate from the reality that every record processed by The Algorithm actually represents a living, breathing person.

In the words of Terry Pratchett: "Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."

I agree with you, though I think that his point is even more, well, pointed.

It isn’t that using “algorithms” is, as you say, a shortcut for bureaucracies. It is that they would do this exact thing with human decisions making if it were economical. The “algorithms” would be instantiated in people if only it were practical to do so.

The “algorithms” are simply a Python version of the bureaucracies‘ business logic.

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