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Thought experiment: If Sears had had access to modern e-commerce targeting algorithms a century ago, is it possible that some of the progressive effects of the

Thought experiment: If Sears had had access to modern e-commerce targeting algorithms a century ago, is it possible that some of the progressive effects of the catalog might never have been realized? Imagine algorithms identifying poor and black customers and promoting products that were already popular for those demographics, making it harder to discover other locally-unavailable products like musical instruments.

IBM 8y ago
I think that's already happened. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...
- freewilly1040 8y ago
  In both of the articles you mention the biased effects were quickly remediated.
skybrian 8y ago
Maybe, but if you search for "trumpet" you will still probably see trumpets, so compared to other forms of discrimination, maybe it's not so significant? One area where poorer people do get charged more is for loans.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Maybe if they also had access to modern production capabilities, warehousing, and picking techniques? My impression is that the Sears catalog represented literally everything the Sears company sold in a single volume, and it was still so cheap to produce that there may not have been much incentive to print different versions for different markets, even if you could differentiate.