The Loop
How Technology is Creating A World Without Choices And How To Fight Back
Jacob Ward Central 006.3 W2591L 2022
NBC News Technology Correspondent
Guess what? Human reflexes are often predictable, and can often be predictable. Advertising agencies, who ultimately channel funding to NBC and pay author Ward's salary, have exploited these reflexes for more than 150 years.
Now computers are doing it better. Processing massive amounts of data to find more widespread human weaknesses, but more disturbingly microdirecting advertisements and "products" like online gambling at individuals.
Yes, it is worrisome, and the first canaries in this new coal mine will be television providers outclassed by the net.
Indeed, it can be difficult for an individual using the internet to find specific products for predetermined needs when the bots are pushing their unwanted crap. It can also be effortless, when the predetermined needs (arrived at slowly, by reasoning and experience) are matched by products designed for those needs.
I can imagine a membership-based consumer advocate organization (sadly, not Consumer Reports) building AI systems that empower individuals to strive for their own ideals and accommodate their personal strengths AND weaknesses, to decide what they REALLY want and SHOULD have to be their own best selves. Combine those needs into product descriptions, and explore the world of 8 billion potential human providers to build teams to "microsatisfy" those needs.
The book has no index, and pulls acronyms and abbreviations mentioned once 30 pages ahead. For example "TN" on page 59, the initials of a subject in a lab experiment described on pages 22 to 26. That's marginally OK if you have a good memory for initials, and read the those initials (and many more) half an hour ago in one sitting, rather than two weeks ago when you put the book down to travel. If you don't read books in one sitting, this one might confuse you.
Notes
p059 "Lord Alderdice" ... briefly described (from author Ward's personal experience) on the page before. I did not stop to look him up, but the wikipedia page is fascinating. Maybe not looking things up is what television correspondents assume, and why they fear that their not-looking-things-up-audience will be exploited by internet source.
- p113 2017 Dr. David Dao (going home to help patients) one of four United Airlines passengers forcibly removed from a flight to make room for United airlines staff. Injuries, lawsuit, United lost far more money than it would cost to hire a private jet to move the staff. Dipshits - but this wasn't AI, just cascading incompetence.
p122 FICO Fair Isaac Corporation credit score ... software makes mistakes.
- p148 "Today, AI is being refined entirely inside for-profit companies." please rephrase that as "Today, what so-called reporters recite into cameras is being refined entirely inside for-profit companies." "... fundamental American assumption that capitalism ..." etcetera.
- p151 AI software "Quixote" processes vast amounts of human generated text describing bank robberies and generates texts describing bank robberies. This does not "teach" anything (Ward's words), it does what it was programmed to do. Or metaprogrammed, one step further along the "compiler chain", the way computers generate template code to multiply programmer efforts.
Upstream of all of this stuff is HUMAN BEINGS deciding what they want, and using computers to multiply the non-zero efforts of those humans. I flick a light switch and the lights come on - I did not need to design and produce the generators, fuel supply, electrical grid, lights, or light switch. Sometimes I wish I could redesign some of that.
- p153 "trolley problem" and reflex decisions. Somehow this is a different problem if software makes the reflex decisions.
p200 Justin Blau 3LAU. Boring, but note that Wikipedia inaccurately elevates it's "avoid all caps" rule above Blau's own use of "3LAU".
- p250 California Employment Development Department (EDD) was hammered with 16 million coronavirus claims, made mistakes using hasty software to identify (or misidentify) bad actors.
- p122 FICO score