BLOG 8: During the week 10 reading we looked at oppression which exists in algorithms. What I found most interesting about the this reading is how a not only a “Artificial intelligence” which holds none of the flaws of human prejudice can still be oppressive towards certain groups of people. The other aspect is that all AI are created by humans so although the AI itself might not hold these prejudice’s the human creating them could be the reason to blame for such outcomes. Although, these issues aren’t probable to cause major harm right now whilst AI is still relatively new it is without a doubt something that could lead to catastrophic consequences as AI plays a much larger role in society. Examples we were shown included real estate ads not shown to the hispanic community. I believe that so long as it is humans programming the AI which control these services then it is inevitable that some level of prejudice will be included into the algorithm whether maliciously or not. Perhaps in an ideal world it is possible to enable these services to be free from any form of judgement however as discussed in class I cannot see such a thing taking place. The only way I can see such an ideal even being possible would be to make a law where all algorithms are public accesible or at least accessible to a certain board or group of authorities.
BLOG 9: The other reading I found interesting was Week 7’s reading about how trends and algorithms can influence the spending of consumers based on these current trends. I myself have found my personal fashion influenced by trends which have appeared and subsequently disappeared as trends often do. Another popular form of e-commerce which I have seen make use of trends and algorithms is drop shipping. This relies on a store selling one particular item which may be hot at the time i.e. fidget spinners. Now more then ever an individual can make a living off the the internet via utilising algorithms, trends and vitality to grow their brand and or store. I do believe the market is quickly getting flooded with people trying to ride the wave of a trend in order to capitlize the most however we have seen this for decades and the internet and trends are only fast tracking these actions.