Computer Science Class of ’60s – Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Brown University & White House

Algorithms have infiltrated our society, imposing their own frame of reference on how we conduct ourselves, how we interact with others, and how we are judged. They’ve turbocharged inequality and biases. They’ve accelerated the balkanization of the landscape of ideas, making it easier and easier to live within suffocatingly homogeneous ideological and cultural bubbles.

Our obsession with technology has brought out the worst in us, while trying to bring out the best. But it’s done a whole lot more. The story of the algorithmic society is not about how the widespread deployment of technology creates distortions in the world. It is about a particular mindset – an algorithmic lens – that has quietly reframed how we think about society itself.

In this talk I’ll describe the elements of this lens — precision, scale, homogeneity, and consistency. I’ll illustrate how many of the problems we encounter with technology come from the distorting effect of this lens. And I’ll also argue (perhaps surprisingly) that the lens still has much to offer, as long as we can understand where it is most effective and where it is not.