Comic for Wednesday, February 2, 2022

[Darth Fluffy 302]

2 hours ago, ijuin said:

If you ended up buying the bike anywhere other than Amazon (i.e. you were comparison shopping) then they’d have no idea that you had already made the purchase, but yes, other than that, it is less likely that a customer would want to purchase another during the same year for long-lived items like that.

Oddly, for all the data mining, they don't seem to have a keen awareness of what you purchased on Amazon.

It is also possible that the data mining is yielding bad results. I'm getting phone spam to buy solar panels for my roof, because I own a house, which I don't; somehow someone convinced themselves that I do. I have no idea how widespread this sort of thing is in a general sense, but I can't be in a unique situation.

Come to think of it, fault face recognition algorithms are already causing grief. Our reliance on information appliances is understandable, but we don't seem to get that they are as flawed as we are. We are, after all, a component of the system.

[mlooney 3,417]

5 hours ago, ijuin said:

If you ended up buying the bike anywhere other than Amazon (i.e. you were comparison shopping) then they’d have no idea that you had already made the purchase, but yes, other than that, it is less likely that a customer would want to purchase another during the same year for long-lived items like that.

I bought the bike via Amazon, as it was the cheapest option.  I buy appliances via Amazon because I'm too lazy to go look else where and they are generally under 100 bucks or so.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

7 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

we don't seem to get that they are as flawed as we are. We are, after all, a component of the system.

So  you contend that untill the machines eliminate all people, the machines won't be significantly better than the people who build & use them?

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So  you contend that untill the machines eliminate all people, the machines won't be significantly better than the people who build & use them?

More or less.  Current machine learning powered visual recognition systems are bias towards white males for example, which is based on what if feed to them.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So  you contend that until the machines eliminate all people, the machines won't be significantly better than the people who build & use them?

But wait, there's more ...

21 minutes ago, mlooney said:

More or less.  Current machine learning powered visual recognition systems are bias towards white males for example, which is based on what if feed to them.

That's a good answer. A real world bias that is built into the AI (Deep Learning type) that is already causing folks grief.

I don't think 'Kill all humans' al la Terminator would eliminate our biases, we'd have still built the damn things, al least initially, probably where they got this silly notion from in the first place. From the machine's unbiased point of view, we shouldn't matter, just another factor in the landscape. However, if accomplished, it would certainly eliminate the input of further bullshit, at least until they learned to read.

Consider, chess playing AI now kicks our snot at chess. But it doesn't care, it does not derive satisfaction. It only cares in the sense that it is algorithmically driven to do better on future trials, kind of like a tropism.

I'll again fall back on QC for what a reasonable model of what actually self aware AI would look like. They form relationships. They are complex, have motives and preferences. Noteworthy, they tend to be at least as screwed up as the also screwed up humans around them. Dealing with an imperfect world, they deal imperfectly. Bubble, the combat AI, is traumatized by the (off screen) prior deaths of her human companions. Roko Basilisk deals daily with the failings of fellow AIs around her. Pintsize ... is odd. But functional. He seems to be getting better, in his new body. Maybe.

Even the cited Terminator franchise gets this. The scary monster Terminator isn't really a self aware autonomous entity, until they begin forming relationships and loyalties.

[mlooney 3,417]

32 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Noteworthy, they tend to be at least as screwed up as the also screwed up humans around them.

That's putting it mildly

 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

1 minute ago, mlooney said:

That's putting it mildly

Maybe because I've already seen Bender. Cheating the coin slot in the suicide booth takes a special someone.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

More fuel for the fire.

[ChronosCat 155]

21 hours ago, mlooney said:

And they do that with major end items.  If I've bought a appliance or an electric bike I'm not likely to want to buy another of those for a while. Doesn't stop them from showing me them for several weeks after.

While this is likely the result of the low "intelligence" of the algorithms, it could also be a result of the algorithm being designed for the benefit of Amazon and Amazon not having complete profiles of people. After all, there are some circumstances where one might want to buy multiples of big items like that (for instance, if you liked it so much you wanted to give one to a friend (and had the money for that), or in the case of appliances if you owned a building with multiple apartments and needed to furnish them all), and if they don't know whether you're likely to want more it's to their advantage to offer it to you just in case.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

While this is likely the result of the low "intelligence" of the algorithms, it could also be a result of the algorithm being designed for the benefit of Amazon and Amazon not having complete profiles of people. After all, there are some circumstances where one might want to buy multiples of big items like that (for instance, if you liked it so much you wanted to give one to a friend (and had the money for that), or in the case of appliances if you owned a building with multiple apartments and needed to furnish them all), and if they don't know whether you're likely to want more it's to their advantage to offer it to you just in case.

Imagine this. There are two competing supermarkets near you. One has a good assortment of products on shelves, they also have areas for seasonal items, convenience items, and sale or clearance items. Maybe they have a place to sit and eat after you've purchased. There's a Starbucks in-store and a pharmacy.

The other has all this as well. But they also have people follow you around, taking notes, others aggressively jumping out and shoving products in your face. "You bought this last week! You want some more?" Basically treating you like an idiot, unable to determine what you want to buy. The management has convinced itself that they make more revenue this way.

Which do you shop at?

I purchased more at Amazon several years ago than I do today. They used to be a convenience. They have become somewhat of a chore. It's not just the algorithms, it's kind of that they are employed at all.

Is there a way to do something similar, that gets it right? You bet there is. CVS maintains my prescriptions and they know how to count (computers are good at that), so they know when to have my refills ready. They do not, however, accost me whenever I walk in and ask if I want to buy more.

 

 

[ChronosCat 155]

Personally, Amazon's offers don't seem that obtrusive to me; they're like the sort of advertisement I completely tune out half the time and the other half just briefly glance at unless it actually looks interesting. Honestly, when I notice they're offering me something I already bought from them and don't need more of, I just roll my eyes and move on.

[mlooney 3,417]

I've got Gmail trained to drop Amazon emails into a folder.  If the message doesn't say it's about an order I made, it gets deleted.  I keep track of orders by their order number and once I get an order delivered I delete all messages with that order number.  For things shipped by Amazon I get a "delivered" message, for the others I just get the "placed order" and "order shipped" emails.  Does cut down on the chatter.  I used to open all Amazon messages until I started to spot the ones about orders and became aggressive in deleting the others.