UN Commissioned "Algotrithm Inspectors?"

All it takes is one "ham fisted" error these days to call out regulators -- and even the UN(!) -- to oversee how powerful Web companies do their business. Here's on British journalist on the well-reported #amazonfail issue. One hopes is using subtle hyperbole, but I can't be sure....

There's a lot of speculation about what actually happened, with some putting forward a view that this was a carefully planned move by US fundamentalists who were gaming Amazon to cause just this sort of public upset and one or two people claiming they were behind it all.

But I'm pretty sure that the error was in the algorithm, in the set of rules that Amazon's systems apply when selecting books to display, coupled perhaps with some unfortunate choices about how certain books should be tagged in the metadata Amazon holds.

This is not, however, a source of comfort. When a book is misfiled in my local Borders it may result in a few lost sales, but for the whole of Amazon to 'misplace' my book may mean nobody in the world buys it. If the filtering had affected people writing about how to keep sheep as domestic pets instead of gay fiction we might not have noticed the error.

The consequences of living by the algorithm do not just affect Amazon, they affect all of us as we increasingly rely on recommendation systems to suggest books to buy, friends to add on social networks, emails to take notice of and places to visit. We have put our faith in Google PageRank and 'Amazon recommends', and found them wanting, yet we do not have an alternative.

The only real solution is the one that fixes so many other problems. We need transparency for the algorithms just as we need transparency about MPs expenses, police behaviour, programme interfaces and how the deep packet inspection that will deliver targeted adverts to our web pages actually works.

Of course we then have to trust the companies, agencies and government departments involved to implement the systems in accordance with the published specifications, and it's unlikely that Amazon or any other e-commerce service will willingly publish its source code for inspection. Perhaps the UN should commission internationally recognised 'algorithm inspectors' just as it has 'weapons inspectors'.

Comments

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The only real solution is the one that fixes so many other problems. We need transparency for the algorithms just as we need transparency about MPs expenses,

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