The Authority of the Algorithms
Algorithms are in every aspect of our daily lives. We have given them authority, but how much should we, will we, give them? Critical thinking required.
If you’ve ever used a recipe to bake something delicious or make a meal, you have used an algorithm, for at their most basic, that’s what algorithms are. Algorithms are ancient, going back thousands of years. Today however, they are more complex and have far more impact and influence on our modern societies, around the world, across almost every culture.
We have given them agency, power, over us as individuals, our sociocultural systems. We have trained them and some argue, they are training us. Algorithms are used across all forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Neural Networks and Machine Learning to Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude.
Algorithms feature in almost every aspect of our daily lives, from the music we listen to, the shows we watch, the bank loans and insurance we apply for, the jobs we want. They are used to assess our job performance, to sentence criminals, to assign our credit scores, detect cancer, create new medicines. Algorithms are used for many good things. Sometimes too, they go wrong.
It is not the fault of the algorithm when they go wrong. Sometimes, we have no idea why they go wrong. What caused them to go wrong. The algorithms do not know when they have done wrong. The algorithms, the machines, they do not apply judgement, sentiment, reasoning or emotion. For they have none of these aspects of being human. They are machines. They do what they have been trained to do.
The culture is in the code, the code is in the culture. Algorithms are created by humans. Today, some algorithms can create other algorithms, but all started with a human, or humans, at some point. Who writes the code influences the outcomes.
We do know that this is why we’ve had serious issues such as gender and racial biases. The tendency of AI systems to sentence Black people more than white or Asian. The use of AI in hiring software has often preferred white males over females or People of Colour.
Algorithms only know two genders; male and female. They’ve not a clue about LGB2TQS+. Yet gender identity has been fluid and mutable in human societies for thousands of years, but this has not yet been coded into the algorithms.
“Algorithms are not technical rocks in a cultural stream, but rather, are just more water” — Nick Server, Anthropologist
The every day life of humans is entangled by cultural, biological and material elements such as air, ideas, water, viruses. The daily toils of an algorithm is entwined with data centres, fibre optic networks, code, software and data. Humans understand. Machines do not. Humans are conscious. Machines are not. Yet the algorithms have authority.
We are beginning to question that authority. This is seen through the lawsuits being brought by governments against Facebook and other Tech Giants for their abuse and mishandling of algorithms. Lawsuits by civil rights groups are gathering force too. We are, slowly, societally, becoming aware of how we are being surveilled and we do not like it.
There is evidence that shows how algorithms can significantly influence individual choice. We are only just starting to find evidence of the wider impacts on society at a macro level.
Will Algorithms Create a Beige World? There’s Hope
Aside from the vital issues of race and gender bias is how algorithms, through their constant work at classifying every aspect of society and culture, could end up creating a beige world. Where no business, no government, sees people as individuals, but as classed groups and in order for humans to operate in this world, we must operate within the confines of what the algorithms have dictated.
Psychology and sociology shows us that human are creatures of habit, that much of what we do can be determined in patterns. But not all we do. If it were the case that humans can all be classified, stuck into columns, defined horizontally and vertically in x and y axis, then we wouldn’t do the wonderfully creative things we do, from music and art to imagining new technologies
A beige world is of course, dystopian. It is also unlikely to come to be. Our societal, collective fear of dystopia and utopia, have never allowed our societies to be this way.
We have already given algorithms some degree of authority. Mostly because a lot of algorithms have been helpful and beneficial. Also because an algorithm is ephemeral, ethereal, like magic to most of us. They cannot be held in our hands, adored, despised or placed on a shelf. They exist locked away in the digital aether. We only know of them when they have resulted in something happening and are told “it was the algorithm” as if that excused the faux pas of the company employing it. That is a disingenuous excuse.
But as we are aware of ideas as we tell stories, we are telling stories of the algorithms, mostly indirectly. We can see this in the stories the spread over social media on how to use background white text in a resumé to cheat the AI tools that scanned them and other workarounds.
Today, algorithms have a remarkable amount of authority across many aspects of our lives, the question is, how much more might they gain? How much more will we give them? What rules and guidelines, ethical and moral, will we bring to bear upon the algorithms?
We must remember though, that algorithms start with humans. We are their creators. So when we question the algorithms, we should question those who create them. The algorithms know not what they do, but the humans certainly do.