{"id":68551,"date":"2019-10-19T05:30:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T09:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=68551"},"modified":"2019-10-18T15:36:37","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T19:36:37","slug":"youtubes-algorithm-hacked-a-human-vulnerability-setting-a-dangerous-precedent-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2019\/10\/19\/youtubes-algorithm-hacked-a-human-vulnerability-setting-a-dangerous-precedent-birmingham\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube\u2019s algorithm hacked a human vulnerability, setting a dangerous precedent [Birmingham]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/which-50.com\/youtube-algorithm-hacked-a-human-vulnerability-setting-a-dangerous-precedent\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>YouTube\u2019s algorithm hacked a human vulnerability, setting a dangerous precedent<\/strong> <\/a>&#8212; from which-50.com by Andrew Birmingham<\/p>\n<p><em>Excerpt<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> (emphasis DSC):<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Even as YouTube\u2019s recommendation algorithm was rolled out with great fanfare, the fuse was already burning. A project of The Google Brain and designed to optimise engagement, it did something unforeseen \u2014 and potentially dangerous.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Today, we are all living with the consequences.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">As Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, explained to attendees of Hitachi Vantara\u2019s Next 2019 conference in Las Vegas this week, \u201cWhat the developers did not understand at the time is that YouTube\u2019 algorithm had discovered a human vulnerability. <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>And it was using this [vulnerability] at scale to increase YouTube\u2019s engagement time \u2014 without a single engineer thinking, \u2018is this what we should be doing?\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The consequence of the vulnerability \u2014 a natural human tendency to engage with edgier ideas \u2014 led to YouTube\u2019s users being exposed to increasingly extreme content, irrespective of their preferred areas of interest.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n\u201cWhat they had done was use machine learning to increase watch time. But what the machine learning system had done was to discover a human vulnerability. And that human vulnerability is that things that are slightly edgier are more attractive and more interesting.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>From DSC:<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Just because we can&#8230;<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>YouTube\u2019s algorithm hacked a human vulnerability, setting a dangerous precedent &#8212; from which-50.com by Andrew Birmingham Excerpt (emphasis DSC): Even as YouTube\u2019s recommendation algorithm was rolled out with great fanfare, the fuse was already burning. A project of The Google Brain and designed to optimise engagement, it did something unforeseen \u2014 and potentially dangerous. Today, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[817,45,210,82,403,63,74,353,309,201,204,101,480,293,40,454,195,321,367],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bots","category-computer-science","category-emerging-technologies","category-engineering","category-ethics","category-google","category-leadership","category-moralsvalues","category-platforms","category-policy","category-programming","category-psychology","category-society","category-sociology","category-technologies-for-your-home","category-the-downsides-of-technology","category-tools","category-united-states","category-vendors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68551"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68555,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68551\/revisions\/68555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}