{"id":1274,"date":"2015-11-20T15:03:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T15:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dataethics.eu\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2016-02-08T07:35:50","modified_gmt":"2016-02-08T07:35:50","slug":"1274-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dataethics.eu\/da\/1274-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing in the Rip Current of the Algorithmic Economy with Closed Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"EoA_sticker1\"<\/p>\n

(Image from the Ethics of Algorithms project, Center for Internet and Human Rights<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Blog: How can we question the ethics of a service if we don\u2019t have access to the details of how it is designed to act on data? How can we put a health warning on a product if we don\u2019t know the ingredients? Ethics is something that needs to be considered in the very innovative processes, it has to be designed into services, it has to be in the algorithms.<\/p>\n

Algorithms are business. They are what make value out of data. The industry knows this and all of the biggest tech industry players are investing heavily in AI and machine learning algorithms. Facebook, Google, Amazon, IBM \u2013 by opening new research departments, hiring AI and machine learning staff in many fold, and dedicating large quantities of budgets in the field.<\/p>\n

We are standing with closed eyes in the rip current of an evolving economy based on finding patterns in data, creating profiles, predicting and responding to data, making meaning out of data and transforming it into value. Some have called this the Algorithmic Economy<\/a>. Because it is the algorithms that are the actual value makers. They are the recipes of successful businesses and so they are of course based on subjective assumptions, perhaps even biases, and interests \u2013 commercial, governmental, scientific etc.<\/p>\n

The odd man out here is that this new type of speedily evolving economy \u2013 with a whole set of new businesses, services, products, infrastructures etc. heavily invested with different interests \u2013 is evolving with no ethical oversight, no public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

There is a total lack of transparency in the proprietary value making algorithms. They are deployed invisibly. The people they act on have no access to them. Their basic functioning and source code are secret. Secret as the recipe for Coca Cola. But powerful and game changing in our every day social lives as described by Francesco Lapenta in this Re:publica talk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many of the industry giants offer developer clouds for developers and new start ups. But the way they offer them is symptomatic of the type of Black Box society<\/a> that Frank Pasquale has described. They only offer the APIs, the tools. That means that not even the developers of new services based on these know the recipes for what they are developing. They are provided with tools to create meaning out of their data, but they do not possess the actual value, which is the algorithm that creates the meaning.<\/p>\n

An example is the IBM Watson\u2019s \u201cECO SYSTEM\u201d. This is where IBM offers developers and start ups Watson partnerships to develop their services and business ideas. One of these new services is Unitesus \u2013 an online career matching platform that matches employers and employees e.g. on cultural fit based on Watson\u2019s cognitive computing. Basically this means that an algorithm profiles and matches a personality of an individual with a potential work place\u2019s culture etc.: \u201cCustom build your perfect employee based on personality, experience, values, skills and company cultural fit\u201d. Imagine that your future career possibilities are decided by a secret algorithm that finds patterns in for example your social media history and profiles you as one type of worker or another \u2013 employable or not. Imagine when a career matching service like this becomes part of the internet of things. An ever connected pervasive environment that measures your professional capabilities and personality based on the way in which you move in your physical environment? A centralized and closed proprietary environment like the one Julia Powles describes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Imagine the ethical implications. You can\u2019t, because how can you question the ethics of a service, a product, an internet thing if not even the developer him\/herself knows exactly how his product\u2019s algorithm is designed to act on its data? How can we put a health warning on a product if we don\u2019t know the ingredients?<\/p>\n

If we don\u2019t have insight into the recipes of these secret algorithms, the very talk about ethics becomes hollow. Ethics is something that needs to be considered in the very innovative processes, it has to be designed into services (as Ind.ie calls for in their Ethical Design Manifesto), it has to be part of the recipe. Its about balancing interests from the beginning \u2013 human, commercial etc., defining ethical non-discriminatory criteria for e.g. prediction and profiling. Right now we are only looking at the consequences and outcomes of the algorithmic processing of data. Some of these consequences we are already finding discriminatory. Like when a piece of software decides if one is fit for a job based on ones social media history that also prevails your social status. But evaluating the consequences is too late. There\u2019s an urgent call for public scrutiny into the algorithmic economy that we need to react on now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Image from the Ethics of Algorithms project, Center for Internet and Human Rights) Blog: How…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193,230,191,177,238,9,370],"tags":[201,300,203,215,283,223,199,250,287,207],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-blogpost","category-business-models","category-democracy","category-free-services","category-latest-news","category-news","tag-ai","tag-algorithms","tag-cognitive-computing","tag-digital-rights","tag-empowerment","tag-iot-en","tag-machine-learning","tag-privacy","tag-privacy-as-innovation","tag-watson-en"],"yoast_head":"\nStanding in the Rip Current of the Algorithmic Economy with Closed Eyes · Dataetisk Tænkehandletank<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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