Hello World Quotes

“we’re put off by the banal, but also hate the radically unfamiliar. The very best films sit in a narrow sweet spot between ‘new’ and ‘not too new’.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“social proof. Whenever we haven’t got enough information to make decisions for ourselves, we have a habit of copying the behaviour of those around us. It’s why theatres sometimes secretly plant people in the audience to clap and cheer at the right times. As soon as we hear others clapping, we’re more likely to join in.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“More downloads led to more downloads. Perceived popularity became real popularity, so that eventual success was just randomness magnified over time.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“Build a machine to improve human performance, she explained, and it will lead – ironically – to a reduction in human ability.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“This is all Bayes’ theorem does: offers a systematic way to update your belief in a hypothesis on the basis of the evidence.30 It accepts that you can’t ever be completely certain about the theory you’re considering, but allows you to make a best guess from the information available.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“The researchers analysed the language in each of the essays for its complexity and found a connection between how articulate the nuns were as young women and their chances of developing dementia in old age.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“Algorithms will make mistakes. Algorithms will be unfair. That should in no way distract us from the fight to make them more accurate and less biased wherever we can – but perhaps acknowledging that algorithms aren’t perfect, any more than humans are, might just have the effect of diminishing any assumption of their authority.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“Gary Marx, professor of sociology at MIT, put the dilemma well in an interview he gave to the Guardian: ‘The Soviet Union had remarkably little street crime when they were at their worst of their totalitarian, authoritarian
controls. But, my God, at what price?”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“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

“He realized that – when whetted in the right way – people’s voracious appetite for an expert’s assessment of themselves could over-ride their desire for privacy. What’s more, they were often willing to pay for the pleasure of feeding it.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“Eric Schmidt, who, while serving as the executive chairman of Google, said he tries to think of things in terms of an imaginary creepy line. ‘The Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it.’4”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“When people are unaware they are being manipulated, they tend to believe they have adopted their new thinking voluntarily,”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

“revealed to be – not some sophisticated AI, not some beautifully crafted mathematical model, but an Excel spreadsheet.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“The problem in the context of justice is that Weber’s Law influences the sentence lengths that judges choose. Gaps between sentences get bigger as the penalties get more severe. If a crime is marginally worse than something deserving”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“In one recent study, set to mimic an airport security environment, these professional face recognizers failed to spot a person carrying the wrong ID a staggering 14 per cent of the time – and incorrectly rejected 6 per cent of perfectly valid matches.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“in the UK, cameras mounted on vehicles that look like souped-up Google StreetView cars now drive around automatically cross-checking our likenesses with a database of wanted people.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“Volvo has adopted a similar approach. Its ‘Autonomous Emergency Braking’ system, which automatically slows the car down if it gets too close to a vehicle in front, is widely credited for the impressive safety record of the Volvo XC90. Since the car first went on sale in the UK in 2002, over 50,000 vehicles have been purchased, and not a single driver or passenger within any of them has been killed in a crash.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“The association was so strong that the researchers could predict which nuns might have dementia just by reading their letters. Ninety per cent of the nuns who went on to develop Alzheimer’s had ‘low linguistic ability’ as young women, while only 13 per cent of the nuns who maintained cognitive ability into old age got a ‘low idea density’ score in their essays.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“A ball at 10p would mean the bat was £1.10, making £1.20 in total.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“The courts are concerned about not making mistakes – especially the judges who are appointed by the public. The algorithm provides them a way to do less work while not being accountable.’35”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“What scares me about this,’ he said, ‘is that you know more about my customers in three months than I know in 30 years.’3 Clubcard was rolled out to all customers of Tesco”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

“people who had Clubcards spent 4 per cent more overall than those who didn’t.”
― Hannah Fry, Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine