Sunday 21 July 2013
Tuesday 2 July 2013
Article: How Algorithms Rule the World. Really.
Continued from Article: How Algorithms Rule the World
"...The reason why there is no popular outrage about Wall Street being run by algorithms is because most people don't yet know or understand it."
[But Steiner says] We should welcome their use when they are used appropriately to aid and speed our lives. "Retail algorithms don't scare me," he says. "I find it useful when Amazon tells me what I might like. In the US, we know we will not have enough GP doctors in 15 years, as not enough are being trained. But algorithms can replace many of their tasks. Pharmacists are already seeing some of their prescribing tasks replaced by algorithms. Algorithms might actually start to create new, mundane jobs for humans. For example, algorithms will still need a human to collect blood and urine samples for them to analyse."
There can be a fine line, though, between "good" and "bad" algorithms, he adds: "I don't find the NSA revelations particularly scary. At the moment, they just hold the data. Even the best data scientists would struggle to know what to do with all that data. But it's the next step that we need to keep an eye on. They could really screw up someone's life with a false prediction about what they might be up to."
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