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Originally Posted by Lightspeed
Yeah, it's pretty shocking. A good/terrible experiment is to watch a few videos of bikini models and see how long it takes for YouTube to recommend child bikini models.
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I finally had the reason for this explained in a talk by
Stuart Russell. The reason is terrifying.
Our basic understanding of the social media advertising algorithms is that they learn what we like and show us ads about those things. Turns out that's wrong.
The algorithms have worked out that it's easier to monetise your eyeballs if you are a predictable person. Predictable people are easier to target because the AIs can, obviously, more effectively predict what you'll respond to.
People with extreme views are more predictable than moderate people. Moderate people change their minds, but extremists are set in their ways. So the algorithms have worked out the most efficient way of maximising ad revenue: turn people into extremists. Because then they're more predictable and thus represent a greater potential return on investment.
It's not that the AIs are working out what we like and are changing the ads; the AIs are working out how to change our brains to make us more likely to click.
Shame that it took the end of the EU and NATO and a few epidemics and some ethnic cleansing before anyone thought to think about other consequences.
See: "
reinforcement learning"