Ben Lazarus Ben Lazarus

The algorithm myth: why the bots won’t take over

Google once believed it could use algorithms to track pandemics. People with flu would search for flu-related information, it reasoned, giving the tech giant instant knowledge of the disease’s prevalence. Google Flu Trends (GFT) would merge this information with flu tracking data to create algorithms that could predict the disease’s trajectory weeks before governments’ own estimates.

But after running the project for seven years, Google quietly abandoned it in 2015. It had failed spectacularly. In 2013, for instance, it miscalculated the peak of the flu season by 140 per cent.

According to the German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, this is a good example of the limitations of using algorithms to surveil and study society. The 74-year-old has just written a book on the subject, How to Stay Smart in a Smart World. He thinks humans need to remain in charge in a world increasingly filled with artificial intelligence that tries to replicate human thinking.

As director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam and former director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Gigerenzer is considered one of the world’s most eminent psychologists. Steven Pinker is a fan; Dominic Cummings quotes him approvingly.

‘Google Flu Trends completely flopped for the simple reason that uncertainty exists — the future is not like the past,’ Gigerenzer says, stroking his walrus moustache. ‘When using big data, you are fine-tuning the past and you’re hopelessly lost if the future is different. In this case, the uncertainty comes from the behaviour of viruses: they are not really predictable, they mutate. And the behaviour of humans is unpredictable.’ In other words, AI can’t predict ‘Black Swan’ events — major surprises that aren’t anticipated in modelling and plans.

Gigerenzer worries that important decisions are being handed over to AI, despite its clear limitations.

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