Dear all, un testo, breve e interessante, della collega Zeynep Tufekci: “Algorithmic judgment is the uncanny valley of computing.” http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-year-we-get-creeped-out-by-algorithms/ Excerpt: "Algorithms are increasingly being deployed to make decisions where there is no right answer, only a judgment call. Google says it’s showing us the most relevant results, and Facebook aims to show us what’s most important. But what’s relevant? What’s important? Unlike other forms of automation or algorithms where there’s a definable right answer, we’re seeing the birth of a new era, the era of judging machines: machines that calculate not just how to quickly sort a database, or perform a mathematical calculation, but to decide what is “best,” “relevant,” “appropriate,” or “harmful.” It’s one thing to ask a computer the answer to a factoring problem, or the quickest driving path from point A to point B — it’s another to have a computer decide for us who among our friends is most “relevant” to us, or what piece of news is of most importance, or who should be hired (or fired). (...) The spread of algorithmic judgment is much more significant than whether Big Blue beats Kasparov at chess, a game that was always unwieldy for humans and suitable for machine computation. Machines have out-muscled us for centuries and out-computed us for decades. Now they are going to judge for us, instead of us, and out-judge us. " -- Antonio A. Casilli Associate Professor, Telecom ParisTech Research Fellow Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS)