Algorithms: AI’s creepy control must be open to inspection

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The past year marked the 60th year of artificial intelligence – and, boy, did it have a lively birthday. Pop open a computer science journal on your laptop during 2016 and you’d be assured that not only was progress happening, but it was doing so much, much faster than predicted. Today, AI and algorithms dominate our lives – from the way financial markets carry out trades to the discovery of new pharmaceutical drugs and the means by which we discover and consume our news.

But, like any invisible authority, such systems should be open to scrutiny. Yet too often they are not open and we are not even fully aware that such systems play the roles they do. For years now, companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook have personalised the information we are fed; combing through our “metadata” to choose items they think we are most likely to be interested in. This is in stark contrast to the early days of online anonymity when a popular New Yorker cartoon depicted a computer-using canine with the humorous tagline: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” In 2017, not only do online companies know that we’re dogs, but also our breed and whether we prefer Bakers or Pedigree. – READ MORE

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