What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn. Ed is an associate professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. He also serves as the academic director of Future Tense, a partnership between ASU, New America, and Slate Magazine.
I really appreciate reading this book as a follow up to The AI Delusion. What Algorithms Want takes a liberal arts approach. This is very appealing and brings a valued perspective.
Ed is communicating that society innocently believes magical algorithms as a tool to a better life. For this purpose, Ed shares that Eric Schmidt indicated that people do not want Google to just provide search results. Rather, they “want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” I find this difficult to believe.
However, Ed also is viewing this from a practical perspective. His view is that algorithms are not only for mathematical logic, but rather for philosophy, cybernetics, and creative thinking.
Accordingly, there is a gap that Ed identifies between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. This is a view outside of traditional computer science books.
Clearly, most users are not aware of how Facebook’s timeline and Google search queries are executions that benefit their data collection and profits. Many would not even consider the impact of Facebook’s timeline as nothing more than the latest news from friends, when in reality it is far from that idea.
Machine Learning
What Algorithms Want takes a deeper dive on Google’s efforts to drive profits from the data mining services across every service they deploy. What is also emphasized is the automatic assumptions by society that Google has their own interests protected because of a flimsy “do no evil” pledge.