Algorithms and advertising

This post has been enlarged from an original comment made on Facebook related to targeted advertising related to words you have used in posts on platforms like Facebook, or searches you have made in Google. For context Neal Asher has been intermittent fasting on and off for years, to this end, he has mentioned Ketone sticks a few times in the last couple of days, the algorithms have crawled over his posts and lo-and-behold ... read on. There is a link to Neals post on Facebook below, and from there you can (if you so wish) follow the thread back to the inception of his latest ninety-hour fast.

Algorithms, a prime example of how to close the gate to keep the horse out. The further along we go, the dumber they seem, and the consensus from greater minds than mine is that the people that program them are quite often not people-people, and therefore lack the intuitive grasp of what makes people tick, which makes them react to the rearview image rather than the potential future.

The danger is (and I've said it before) the lack of humanity in programming means that well-intentioned but empathy bereft people will make abrasive and cutting software that dispenses justice to a broader swathe of the rest of the population as time goes by. We have already seen it with Amazon, and its algorithm that fires delivery people. And it is very apparent that these tools are used in the emerging work from home market. To this end, the US government recently made it illegal for companies to use algorithms to sack people. However, there are places in our world, where human concerns are less pertinent. And with some strategic offshoring, you can circumvent the metric that makes it illegal, by placing a human at the end of the chain who pulls the trigger.

On from this the whole recruitment industry which from an outsider perspective is full of chancers, lazy cunts, and bullshitters, has painted itself into a corner by dint of the liberal use of SOE and algorithms to select on keywords or phrases to find recruits, and as above, the people that put the systems together for the recruitment companies lack people skills, so companies are wholesale streaming talent away from their businesses at a time when they need to be finding thinkers and innovators.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous for the economy.

Original Facebook post