Quote of the Day | 1002
Looking at the pattern of algorithmic systems like Google and Facebook, I started thinking about how that applies to financial markets. A system like Google has hundreds of factors that are being taken into account, but they all have a master objective function, a fitness function, which is relevance in search results and ads.
Facebook’s fitness function, their objective function, is to produce content that’s engaging. We saw how that went wrong with fake news. Mark and the Facebook team are trying to deal with that. They’re wrestling with the fact that they had this idea about how to build an engaging product, and it’s been subverted.
I look at our economic system where inequality is increasing, and I ask myself: Is that also something of a system that’s dominated by an algorithm? What are they trying to optimize for?
Tim O’Reilly, in: ‘Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination’
[x]#13338 fan maandag 2 oktober 2017 @ 23:23:23
