There's a widening gap between those who trust artificial intelligence algorithms and those who are navigating away from them.
(...) The savvier users are navigating away from devices and becoming aware of how algorithms affect their lives. Meanwhile, consumers who have less information are relying even more on algorithms to guide their decisions.
The main reason for the new digital divide, in my opinion as someone who studies information systems, is that so few people understand how algorithms work. For a majority of users, algorithms are seen as a black box.
AI algorithms take in data, fit them to a mathematical model and put out a prediction, ranging from what songs you might enjoy to how many years someone should spend in jail. These models are developed and tweaked based on past data and the success of previous models. Most people—even sometimes the algorithm designers themselves—do not really know what goes inside the model.
As part of the recently approved General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union, people have “a right to explanation” of the criteria that algorithms use in their decisions. This legislation treats the process of algorithmic decision-making like a recipe book. The thinking goes that if you understand the recipe, you can understand how the algorithm affects your life.
(...) In my view, the new digital literacy is not using a computer or being on the internet, but understanding and evaluating the consequences of an always-plugged-in lifestyle.
This lifestyle has a meaningful impact on how people interact with others; on their ability to pay attention to new information, and on the complexity of their decision-making processes.
Increasing algorithmic anxiety may also be mirrored by parallel shifts in the economy. A small group of individuals are capturing the gains from automation, while many workers are in a precarious position.
Opting out from algorithmic curation is a luxury—and could one day be a symbol of affluence available to only a select few. The question is then what the measurable harms will be for those on the wrong side of the digital divide.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
