Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-bubbles – The Algorithms That Control Our Lives by David Sumpter. He is a professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. David was awarded the UK’s Institute of Mathematics 2015 prize for communicating mathematics to a wider audience in his research How to Model Honeybee Colonies.
As this title implies, the exploitation of algorithms is brought into focus. The timing of reading this book today is almost perfect. The abuse by Facebook and Google continue. The fallout of the Cambridge Analytica scandal also continues. In fact, David’s work is perhaps even more poignant as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 has taken the world by storm.
Perhaps now in early 2023 the coming GPT4 will shift the common misconception that AI algorithms are actually more advanced that many considered.
While the world was somewhat confused by the integrity of ChatGPT-3 data, OpenAI’s collaboration integrating Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT.
Give it less than six to eight months and this will spin the ChatGPT non-believers into new knots.
However there are certainly many interesting examples that follow revealing when statistical techniques require advanced mathematical knowledge and ultimately requiring more time (and effort) to fully understand and ultimately communicate outcomes effectively to general audience.
