Cyborg Corporations

Tim O’Reilly says, like an AI gone rogue, somebody planted the idea that shareholder value was the right algorithm, the right thing to be optimizing for. But this wasn’t the way companies acted before. We can plant a different idea. That’s what this political process is about. wired

I’m optimistic because we’re having a conversation about biased algorithms. We had plenty of bias before but we couldn’t see it. We can’t see, for example, that the algorithms that manage the workers at McDonald’s or The Gap are optimized toward not giving people full-time work so they don’t have to pay benefits. All that was invisible. It wasn’t until we really started seeing the tech-infused algorithms that people started being critical.

.

See Beware the Machines for more about AI.

See Scale is a Trap about misalignment of goals.

See Algorithmic Entities for an alarming warning.

See More than your Resume for hiring practice failures.