Comment on The Algorithm Finally Works For You
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 days ago
I’m always up for a good AI dystopia article, but this is pretty poorly written, taking a very long time to say very little new or interesting. For this reason I wouldn’t be surprised if the author used AI assistance in writing it, which would certainly tell you something about the author’s objectivity. (It has a lot of earmarks of recent-model AI essay writing, like repeated use of the rule of threes, though I admit a human could have produced it. )
The thesis appears to be that AI can be an equalizer to put individuals on equal footing to corporate data processing tasks. But conversely that it may not be because viability, quality and reliability depends on who controls the model and whether it hallucinates in critical or non-critical ways. Thanks for the clarity, article.
None of this is new thought, but just another part of an inherently AI-normalizing line of thinking that AI is just another democratizing technological tool (but that could be used for evil - or good! - or evil!). The author addresses some of the AI flaws but ends almost where it began, with that flawed premise, which elides how unlike other tools, AI actually degrades our abilities to think and communicate once we start relying on it. The article doesn’t address that communication, meaning, thought, and reliability are degraded when either individual or corporate systems integrate AI.
Instead, the author would like you to think individuals can level a playing field by using AI against corporate algorithms. Sure, a person denied a medical claim by a health insurer AI can now write a generic appeal, but that appeal can just a efficiently continue to be denied by better funded AI. It’s a meaningless comparison
What truly matters and is unaffected by consumer AI use is power - political and corporate power. AI just floods the zone with more output, but the result of us all adopting AI will change nothing to the power imbalance in our system. The solution to low effort slop won’t be more low effort slop - we’d just be burying ourselves deeper in it.
AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Corporate algorithms gave them that power, or at least have been helping them to maintain it for decades. The article uses the very real example of RealPage, whose YieldStar software was helping landlords manage over 3 million rental properties in the US by 2022. Ultimately it took ProPublica to pull back the curtain on a computed market where an algorithm was telling landlords how much to charge tenants for a majority of the market. And even then, I don’t think it’s stopped. Landlords are still coordinating rent prices across the vast majority of rental properties, and all the common folk has to help is, like the article says, “Zillow and a prayer”.
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 days ago
This is exactly my point. The ability for companies to gouge consumers is exacerbated by algorithms, sure. But they have power because the regulatory rules are either in their favor or not.
Even exposing it as you note didn’t change it. Likewise individual consumers don’t have the ability to change it. It’s a red herring and false solution to say “AI can fix it.”