Algorithms Quotes

“If life is slumping down into the algorithms of depression, succumbing to instigating moods of worthlessness, we must endeavor to get out of the rabbit hole of mistrust, shape challenging decisions, pick the fitting fight-or-flight mode, and hit the ground running. ("A glimpse of the future")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Algorithms are great tools for improving business results, but its people and their leadership that ultimately determine business success.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Google creates advertising algorithms, not information algorithms.”
― Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

“But even when Facebook isn't deliberately exploiting its users, it is exploiting its users—its business model requires it. Even if you distance yourself from Facebook, you still live in the world that Facebook is shaping. Facebook, using our native narcissism and our desire to connect with other people, captured our attention and our behavioral data; it used this attention and data to manipulate our behavior, to the point that nearly half of America began relying on Facebook for news. Then, with the media both reliant on Facebook as a way of reaching readers and powerless against the platform's ability to suck up digital advertising revenue—it was like a paperboy who pocketed all the subscription money—Facebook bent the media's economic model to match its own practices: publications needed to capture attention quickly and consistently trigger high emotional responses to be seen at all. The result, in 2016, was an unending stream of Trump stories, both from the mainstream news and from the fringe outlets that were buoyed by Facebook's algorithm. What began as a way for Zuckerberg to harness collegiate misogyny and self-interest has become the fuel for our whole contemporary nightmare, for a world that fundamentally and systematically misrepresents human needs.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

“The issue is not merely one of false stories, incorrect facts, or even election campaigns and spin doctors: the social media algorithms themselves encourage false perceptions of the world. People click on the news they want to hear; Facebook, YouTube, and Google then show them more of whatever it is that they already favor, whether it is a certain brand of soap or a particular form of politics. The algorithms radicalize those who use them too. If you click on perfectly legitimate anti-immigration YouTube sites, for example, these can lead you quickly, in just a few more clicks, to white nationalist sites and then to violent xenophobic sites. Because they have been designed to keep you online, the algorithms also favor emotions, especially anger and fear. And because the sites are addictive, they affect people in ways they don't expect. Anger becomes a habit. Divisiveness becomes normal. Even if social media is not yet the primary news source for all Americans, it already helps shape how politicians and journalists interpret the world and portray it. Polarization has moved from the online world into reality.

The result is a hyper-partisanship that adds to the distrust of "normal" politics, "establishment" politicians, derided "experts," and "mainstream" institutions--including courts, police, civil servants--and no wonder. As polarization increases, the employees of the state are invariably portrayed as having been "captured" by their opponents. It is not an accident that the Law and Justice Party in Poland, the Brexiteers in Britain, and the Trump administration in the United States have launched verbal assaults on civil servants and professional diplomats. It is not an accident that judges and courts are now the object of criticism, scrutiny, and anger in so many other places too. There can be no neutrality in a polarized world because there can be no nonpartisan or apolitical institutions.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“Although greed is considered one of the seven deadly sins, it turns out that greedy algorithms often perform quite well.”
― Stuart Russell, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

“Sonnet of Cryptocurrency

The reason people are nuts about cryptocurrency,
Is that they hear the magic phrase regulation-free.
But what they forget to take into account,
Is that it also means the user alone bears liability.
The purpose behind a centralized system,
Is not exploitation but to provide trust and stability.
Anything that is decentralized on the other hand,
Is a breeding ground for fraud and volatility.
Not every fancy innovation is gonna benefit society,
Innovation without accountability is only delusion.
Cryptocurrency can be a great boon to banking,
If it merges with the centralized financial institution.
Intoxication of tech is yet another fundamentalism.
Algorithm without humanity is digital barbarism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“Don’t be scared of racist people.
Be frightened of ‘racist’ algorithms
because they have no conscience and
are much more effective.”
― Murat Durmus, The AI Thought Book: Inspirational Thoughts & Quotes on Artificial Intelligence

“Explainability is one thing; interpreting it rightly (for the good of society), is another.”
― Murat Durmus, The AI Thought Book: Inspirational Thoughts & Quotes on Artificial Intelligence

“Algorithm without humanity is mental holocaust.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“The realisation that what are usually called ‘predictive’ technologies are in fact interested more in ‘nudging’ and mapping out the new rhythms of the city than in simply monitoring or surveilling also suggests the need for a new conception of digital time. Armen Arvanessian argues that as a result of digital data time itself – the direction of time – has changed. We no longer have a linear time, in the sense of the past being followed by the present and then the future. It’s rather the other way around: the future happens before the present, time arrives from the future. If people have the impression that time is out of joint, or that time doesn’t make sense anymore, or it isn’t as it used to be, then the reason is, I think, that they have – or we all have – problems getting used to living in such a speculative time or within a speculative temporality. Data technologies do not simply predict the future by guessing what an individual or group might do or want to do in the future. It is rather that those futures already exist, completely realised, and they reach backwards into the present to guide it. The possible paths for our desires to travel are mapped ahead of time by algorithms in the hands of platform capitalists.”
― Alfie Bown, Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships

“Transhumanism is Terrorism (The Sonnet)

Intelligence comes easy, accountability not so much,
Yet intelligence is complex, accountability is simple.
Technology comes easy, transformation not so much,
Yet technology is complicated, transformation is simple.
In olden days there were just nutters of fundamentalism,
Today there are nutters of nationalism and transhumanism.
Some are obsessed with land, others with digital avatars,
While humanity battles age-old crises like starvationism.
When too much logic, coldness and pomposity set in,
Common sense humanity goes out of the window.
Once upon a time religion was the opium of all people,
Today transhumanism and singularity are opium of the shallow.
To replace the sky god with a computer god isn't advancement.
Real advancement is when nobody suffers from scarcity of sustenance.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“Transhumanism is terrorism, for it is the very antithesis of life. Wasting precious resources on a pompous, narcissistic and megalomaniacal dream of extending life through cold, mechanical means, instead of helping to improve genuine human condition, transhumanists act as modern day terrorists who desecrate the very spirit of life and liberty without ever being held accountable. Let me tell you as a brain scientist and a computer engineering dropout - transhumanism is to brain computer interface, what nuclear weapons are to nuclear physics.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“We are approaching a soft data catastrophe. Entire lives, from tastes in music and clothes to deepest personal convictions - all produced by networks of feedback between datamining and content recommendation algorithms.

The 'catastrophe' is when these algorithms unconsciously (or maybe, consciously?) lead people down presupposed paths for modern and emerging markets.

Algorithms could right now be helping make people convert to a religion, drug addicts, vegan, LGBTQ, ethnonarcissists, fat, cult members, suicidal, narcissists, atheist, poly, mass shooters...”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“Google hit such a degree of control in their operation of YouTube that they can tweak the algorithms just right to recommend very peculiar kinds of videos to suit economic and social changes.”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“It used to be you'd search for something and find tons of good results. Now you type "hamburger" anywhere on your phone or computer and now advertising cartels serve you up some ads for hamburgers for the next week.

Hell just say it aloud near your phone, it'll just take longer.”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“The only way to make sure that you don't lose your job with the arrival of AI, is to do something that AI cannot do, and the only thing that artificial intelligence cannot do but a human can, is being original. So, do something original and no AI can ever replace you.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“In the era where artificial intelligence and algorithms make more decisions in our lives and in organizations, the time has come for people to tap into their intuition as an adjunct to today’s technical capabilities. Our inner wisdom can embed empirical data with humanity.”
― Abhishek Ratna, small wins BIG SUCCESS: A handbook for exemplary success in post Covid19 Outbreak Era

“Life was far more interesting when we had natural rhythms rather than algorithms”
― Dean Cavanagh

“Thus, for example, the idea of progress has disappeared, yet progress continues. The idea of wealth that production once connoted has disappeared, yet production itself continues more vigorously than ever. Indeed, it picks up speed precisely in proportion to its increasing indifference to its original aims. Of the political sphere one can say that the idea of politics has disappeared but that the game of politics continues in secret indifference to its own stakes. Of television, that it operates in total indifference to its own images (it would not be affected, in other words, even were mankind to disappear). Could it be that all systems, all individuals, harbour a secret urge to be rid of their ideas, of their own essences, so as to be able to proliferate everywhere, to transport themselves simultaneously to every point of the compass? In any event, the consequences of a dissociation of this kind can only be fatal. A thing which has lost its idea is like the man who has lost his shadow, and it must either fall under the sway of madness or perish.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“The belief that technology will solve every single problem of society, is what I call digital fundamentalism, which is as dangerous as religious fundamentalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“Algorithm without humanity is digital barbarism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“If we want to compare a computer algorithm with nature, we must consider that a lot of the algorithms that are dictating international issues, politics, capitalism, culture and ultimately the content of human attention, were basically programmed by young men fresh out of Stanford, Harvard and MIT. So the experience behind these algorithms is basically puberty and then some, whereas the experience behind nature goes all the way back to the big bang.”
― Jonathan Simons, The Analog Sea Review: Number Two

“And how biased is too biased? At what point do you prioritize the victims of preventable crimes over the victims of the algorithm?”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“Humanizing AI (The Sonnet)

You can code tasks,
But not consciousness.
You can code phony feelings,
But definitely not sentience.
Nobody can bring a machine to life,
No matter how complex you make it.
But once a machine is complex enough,
It might develop awareness by accident.
So let us focus on humanizing AI,
By removing biases from algorithms,
Rather than dehumanizing AI,
By aiming for a future without humans.
Rich kids with rich dreams make good movies.
Be human first and use AI to equalize communities.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“We have to place our attention on humanizing artificial intelligence by removing the biases from algorithms rather than dehumanizing it.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Just as how unconscious bias can seep into algorithms, so can conscious bias. Conscious bias happens when we know we’re being biased toward a particular person or a group of people. Although this is rare in AI, the threat is always there.”
― Kavita Ganesan, The Business Case for AI: A Leader's Guide to AI Strategies, Best Practices & Real-World Applications

“Statistics are reliable, but only as idiot demons.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“[...] [A] world increasingly reliant on and in thrall to data. Big Data. Which in turn is panned for Big Truths by Big Algorithms, using Big Computers. But when your big data is corrupted by big silences, the truths you get are half-truths, at best. And often, for women, they aren't true at all.”
― Caroline Criado Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“There is discrimination, and the opportunities are not equal to everyone. Most countries are blocked from using several crucial features on Google, Amazon, Shopify, AliExpress, and many more platforms that the "internet millionaires" use to get all of their wealth. They are not smarter than you! They simply have access to markets that are blocked to you! When you try to compete inside their markets, the domain owners alter the algorithms to favor people in that geolocation and put them and their products in front of your. I have been stopped from uploading books for no other reason than being in east Europe. People don't believe these stories are true because they don't want to believe they are living in such a world. It's like the story of the Native Americans, who were offered blankets contaminated with diseases to kill them. Now you are being offered a blanket of illusions that gives you lies. And when you say the truth, they call it a conspiracy and hate speech.”
― Dan Desmarques