4 ms·

This is all supposed to be politically scary and demonstrative of the fact that very few people actually knows what is going on. Which all the more scary to me

This is all supposed to be politically scary and demonstrative of the fact that very few people actually knows what is going on. Which all the more scary to me because these are the people who are supposed to understand what's going on so they can have proper oversight. This entire issue reminds me of the time the supreme court tried to wrap their brains around the (finger quotes) "the cloud". What's really sad is that nobody has been addressing just how creepy the internet is getting. Like the fact that with just 500 likes the social network can insinuate more of your personality than your lover. Or how Google can predict what you will likely like to eat for breakfast tomorrow based on the kind of stuff you are buying at the store whenever you use reward cards that is gets cross referenced to your browsing habits that insinuate moods. We are really over engineering the internet to the point that we have a "don't touch that red button" being installed into our lives where nobody knows what it does until it gets pressed, we end up wrecking our cars and are left wondering why the car manufacturers thought it was smart to install NOS in our cars without our knowledge in order to remain on the cutting edge (and thus competitive).

terminado 9y ago
...with just 500 likes the social network can insinuate more of your personality than your lover. ...and get absolutely everything wrong with such assumptions in the process, including whether or not it's possible to lie when using the Like button.
- robryan 9y ago
  For advertising purposes it really only depends as a whole how truthful a picture the likes tell. If the likes are on average 70% truthful it is still going to be more effective targeting than not using them at all.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    Which is the point. People need to stop seeing "better than a coin flip" as "knowing you better than your lover".
    - cygx 9y ago
      It's a reference to a study where they had an algorithm fed with a certain number of facebook likes compete against personal acquaintances (including spouses) in predictig personality traits. The algorithm won: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1418680112 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1418680112
      - xg15 9y ago
        The parent's argument assumes though that this kind of accuracy is achieved regularly and consistently today, which is way different than the report of one study.
        superjambo 9y ago
        It doesn't need to be consistent in order to be horrifying. The fear is that big data tech will become radioactive. Imagine a bus full of school kids crashes because the driver was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon. Some smart SV engineer realizes their tech spotted the driver visited AA groups regularly & his wife just left him. The algorithm knows this data makes him an excellent target audience for _new alco-energy drink!_. It doesn't really matter if the technology is even capable of that yet, what matters is that this is the sort of outcome that adtech engineers are trying to create.
      - usrusr 9y ago
        But what's the supposed ground truth that spouses and algorithms were tested against? Self reporting? Some other glorified coin flip algorithm that maybe just did the same mistakes as the "thumbs" algorithms? An export panel populated with people that, unlike the benchmarked spouses and acquaintances, used the same jargon as the algorithm authors? (Glancing over the footnotes it seems to be (b), some other algorithm) The beauty of adtech: it's perfectly fine to be wrong as long as advertisers think you are right. On meta level, this "better than your lover" meme/study is surprisingly enlightening.
exergy 9y ago
I'm deriving a perverse kind of pleasure from all this. Maciej Ceglowski has a fantastic talk called Haunted By Data, where he compares data to radioactive waste: we collect a lot of it, and ultimately don't know how to handle it safely and responsibly. He ends the talk with a warning that unless the tech sector is careful, they will have their own Three Mile Island, and will forever afterwards be regulated into the ground. Facebook and Google are almost begging for it. May we see them become a shadow of their powerful selves in not too distant a future.
vqng 9y ago
>>> This is all supposed to be politically scary and demonstrative of the fact that very few people actually knows what is going on. I just realized we are not even talking about AI.

terminado 9y ago

...with just 500 likes the social network can insinuate more of your personality than your lover. ...and get absolutely everything wrong with such assumptions in the process, including whether or not it's possible to lie when using the Like button.

robryan 9y ago
For advertising purposes it really only depends as a whole how truthful a picture the likes tell. If the likes are on average 70% truthful it is still going to be more effective targeting than not using them at all.
- noobermin 9y ago
  Which is the point. People need to stop seeing "better than a coin flip" as "knowing you better than your lover".
  - cygx 9y ago
    It's a reference to a study where they had an algorithm fed with a certain number of facebook likes compete against personal acquaintances (including spouses) in predictig personality traits. The algorithm won: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1418680112 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1418680112
    - xg15 9y ago
      The parent's argument assumes though that this kind of accuracy is achieved regularly and consistently today, which is way different than the report of one study.
      - superjambo 9y ago
        It doesn't need to be consistent in order to be horrifying. The fear is that big data tech will become radioactive. Imagine a bus full of school kids crashes because the driver was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon. Some smart SV engineer realizes their tech spotted the driver visited AA groups regularly & his wife just left him. The algorithm knows this data makes him an excellent target audience for _new alco-energy drink!_. It doesn't really matter if the technology is even capable of that yet, what matters is that this is the sort of outcome that adtech engineers are trying to create.
    - usrusr 9y ago
      But what's the supposed ground truth that spouses and algorithms were tested against? Self reporting? Some other glorified coin flip algorithm that maybe just did the same mistakes as the "thumbs" algorithms? An export panel populated with people that, unlike the benchmarked spouses and acquaintances, used the same jargon as the algorithm authors? (Glancing over the footnotes it seems to be (b), some other algorithm) The beauty of adtech: it's perfectly fine to be wrong as long as advertisers think you are right. On meta level, this "better than your lover" meme/study is surprisingly enlightening.

exergy 9y ago

I'm deriving a perverse kind of pleasure from all this. Maciej Ceglowski has a fantastic talk called Haunted By Data, where he compares data to radioactive waste: we collect a lot of it, and ultimately don't know how to handle it safely and responsibly. He ends the talk with a warning that unless the tech sector is careful, they will have their own Three Mile Island, and will forever afterwards be regulated into the ground. Facebook and Google are almost begging for it. May we see them become a shadow of their powerful selves in not too distant a future.

vqng 9y ago

>>> This is all supposed to be politically scary and demonstrative of the fact that very few people actually knows what is going on. I just realized we are not even talking about AI.