Please do watch the TED talk by Zeynep. She actually says something along these lines - that it's not so much a conspiracy but probably an unfortunate side effe

Please do watch the TED talk by Zeynep. She actually says something along these lines - that it's not so much a conspiracy but probably an unfortunate side effect. What the system ultimately cares about is that people stay longer on a site if they're fed more extreme content. From my brief experience with neural networks, they work very well for some kinds of tasks but you never know why they calibrate themselves this way. One of uses of neural networks that impresses me the most is Keldon AI, the free (open source) app for Race for the Galaxy board game. Traditional game AI is notably bad with "fuzzy logic" - when you're unable exhaustively calculate everything, and your opponent is just getting some cards. Well it turns out machine learning doesn't care about that. It cares that if it has X cards in hand and you have Y cards in hand, and the table looks so and so, playing card Z has C chance of landing a win in the long run. Or something like that. And it works! But if you look inside the rftg app, you'll just see piles of numbers. Just weights. SO when you play against it, you see what it played, but you're never sure why, and it can't explain itself. Zeynep actually talks about this, but in more sinister context. For instance deep learning algorithms are eerily good at detecting bipolar people. They can take advantage of people with various mental disabilities and disorders. Think of the consequences. What if this is used to create your personal profile and share it across shops you visit.