Algorithms aren’t evildoers plotting world domination. That’s more the domain of the human-loathing tech dorks who wield them.
The algorithms act like our personal curators. Of music and TikTok videos, but also of human interaction and of our ability to choose whom we empathize with. Just because it’s being optimized to the max for engagement doesn’t mean it wants you to engage with anything other than its services. This creates a filter bubble, a psychological concept where you only see more of what you already like and less of what challenges you.
We blame algorithms for being cold and calculating, yet we tend to forget that humans create them and deploy them on other humans for profit. The things algorithms have been doing to us for the past 20-years years are just a digital extension of things humans have been doing to each other for thousands of years.
Algorithms are chastised for serving up stuff that our brains already believe. Humans have been doing that for years, and it’s all neatly summed up in a term you are probably already familiar with: confirmation bias. We so love the things that already think and feel, that of course, we built it into the algorithms that fuel our apps. They’re pocket-sized belief reinforcement engines.
It l leads to public discourse that’s polarized and repeats the same debates again and again, seemingly endlessly, echoing through the infinite expanse of time. And all because the algorithms didn’t just split us into tribes, they made us more vain than ever. They tell us that we are the prettiest of them all, and now they can literally do that with AI chatbots, which bend over backward to kiss your a—.
Algorithms Aren’t New—They’re Just Automating What Humans Have Always Done
The algorithms are optimized for what keeps us scrolling, which tends to manipulate human emotion. Especially eliciting anger, one of the most potent drivers of algorithmic engagement, according to research.
Maybe if we want tech to be less alienating, we should start with how we treat people offline, since who we actually are in the physical world ends up directly reflected in how we shape our experiences and interactions in the digital world.
We can start by not treating each other like data points and start treating each other like complex, nuanced, emotionally sensitive, and (occasionally) intellectually curious human beings who may not always hit you back with the perfect response, may not always be emotionally stable, and may not always be in the right headspace for a constructive chat.
Maybe the rise of algorithms will ultimately be a good thing. Like when you realize a bad personal trait of yours was in one of your parents, and now you are unconsciously passing it to your kids, the algorithms might be offering us the blessing of giving us an external and observable understanding of the cornucopia of miseries we’ve been inflicting on each other. Once we start looking at them through that lens, as direct digital manifestations of everything that’s already been inside of us for thousands of years, then maybe we can reach the ultimate conclusion: to get them to stop ripping us apart, we need to stop ripping each other apart first.
They’re just a mishmash of our worst psychological quirks and biases that have been inside us for as long as we’ve been around, just done with the ruthless robotic efficiency that Silicon Valley specializes in. The algorithms have never been the problem. The problem was always and will forever be us.
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