If the broader ramifications weren’t so serious!
This just happened to me this morning. It would be purely and immensely
hilarious, if its broader ramifications that impact our lives every day
weren’t so serious.
It has to do with algorithms – software programs designed to replace human
brains everywhere human brains used to make decisions. It has to do with how
they can go haywire, how they don’t see the obvious, don’t even look at
the obvious, and make totally stupid decisions.
In this instance, the algo made the entire company look idiotic. It’s so
funny, I’m still grinning – at Amazon’s expense.
But if this sort of corporate algo fuckup happens in your medical
situation or a credit application or while looking for a job, you could be in
deep trouble. And it’s likely happening there too.
Some background: I have two books on Amazon and link to them on WOLF
STREET. I sell a few of them a week. It’s not even pocket money. But it’s fun
knowing that someone is interested in my books. They’re entertainment, and
hopefully they’ll make someone laugh.
Back in the day while I still used the predecessor site, I had an associate account with Amazon.
When I switched to WOLF STREET in July 2014, I let that account go and forgot
about it. The other day, I remembered it and decided to log in and check it
out. Turns out, Amazon had closed it. No big deal. It told me to open a new
one. So I jumped through the necessary hoops, supplying all the tax and
banking info, and opened a new one, tying it to my site, www.wolfstreet.com
Everything was hunky-dory and worked, until this morning, when I got an
email from Amazon, from no particular person but from some nameless algo that
doesn’t even know how to spell (though that would be the least you’d expect
an algo to get right). Here it is, typos and all:
Hello,
Thank you for applying for the Associate program. Upon review, we are
unable to accept your application. A part of our criteria is that your site
has to be established with enough unique content. We rejected your
application due to one or more of the following reasons.
– Lack of content which is original to your site and beneficial to your
visitors
– Pages that are mainly empty when advertisement content is removed
Unfortunately, we arent able to review an application once its been
rejected. If your website has been further developed and now contains
appropriate content, youre welcome to submit another application by using the
following URL:
So this algo said that the very WOLF
STREET you’re looking at doesn’t have “enough unique content,” that
pages “are mainly empty when advertisement content is removed.”
There are thousands of unique articles written by me and other authors on
this site, plus over 31,000 unique and often excellent comments written by
readers. And that silly Amazon algo failed to see them – and made a decision
based on this failure.
“Pages that are mainly empty when advertisement content is removed.”
Hilarious. I mean, such a HOOT!
Who wrote that algo? Humans, for sure. So we don’t blame the algo. That’s
useless. We blame the humans at super-duper high-tech outfit Amazon that
concocted this critter. And we blame management for allowing it to exist and
make decisions that are just ludicrous.
When an algo like this goes haywire, it’s an institutional problem. Bezos
did it.
In this particular instance, Amazon’s decision has practically zero impact
on me. But algos like this are running our lives, from the mundane, like what
ads you see on your computer or smartphone, to the crucial, like medical
treatments and credit applications (mortgages, auto loans, etc.). Algos
are used by financial firms to trade and manipulate the markets. They’re
used by recruiters – and so your career depends on them. Algos are used for a
million things.
They impact many essential parts of our lives – and most of the time, we
don’t even know. It’s just when we notice that something went wrong that we
begin wondering. But often times, we don’t even know something went wrong.
The algo just did something in the background in a picosecond, and it’s
undermining something that could be crucial to us. And there won’t even be a
human available to fix the situation.
Which gives me second thoughts about self-driving cars: they’re driven by
algos, and those algos make life-and-death decisions all the time.
When I wrote about self-driving cars the
other day, it generated a torrent of excellent comments, at last count 152.
It’s all part of the “Pages that are mainly empty when advertisement content
is removed,” as Amazon’s algo put it so eloquently. Many of these
comments are pooh-poohing the concept of self-driving cars, sometimes for the
same reason I stated here, that an algo might go haywire and make the wrong
decision. So I’ll eat a little crow. Read… Self-Driving
Vehicle Revolution to Wipe Out 4 Million Jobs
