Sirens on th Ie Rocks
The seductive appeal of algorisms.
Modern technology claims to make our day more successful, less detailed, less cluttered and more human. As a result, we tend to give new tech applications the benefit of the doubt. More than that, we rely upon them to reduce the parts of our job that we find difficult and repetitive.
How easy it is, then, to fall into the trap of making substitutions, machine algorithms for human activity, without paying enough attention to the result. Our default position is to assume that they are accomplishing good results and with much less human labor.
And we are easily mistaken. Many jobs are more successfully accomplished by a reliance on human skills. Intuitive weighing, the sensitivity to interactions, and the constant discovery of new factors are the “human” way of making decisions. Algorithms choose on the basis of fixed criteria and in general are incapable of the subtle narrow differences that humans see as making “all the difference” —- when they choose a product or a career or a college (for study or to make a charitable contribution.)
They are, however, seductively attractive. They promise to make life easier and their users appear more “modern” and “up-to-date” having abandoned “old-fashioned” ways of working.
It isn’t easy to sit at a desk and interview a list of candidates and treat each one as a unique person with skills and accomplishments that provide information that the human mind, although not flawless, can analyze better than any machine algorythm. It’s an all- day job, not a score generated from questionnaires and aptitude tests.