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This is terrifying.
Wasn't sure if it was it was to go in the politics or tech forum, went with tech instead because it would probably get washed away with the other politics stuff.
Google, democracy and the truth about internet search | Technology | The Guardian
Wasn't sure if it was it was to go in the politics or tech forum, went with tech instead because it would probably get washed away with the other politics stuff.
Google, democracy and the truth about internet search | Technology | The Guardian
He’s surprised too. “I thought they stopped offering autocomplete suggestions for religions in 2011.†And then he types “are women†into his own computer. “Good lord! That answer at the top. It’s a featured result. It’s called a “direct answerâ€. This is supposed to be indisputable. It’s Google’s highest endorsement.†That every women has some degree of prostitute in her? “Yes. This is Google’s algorithm going terribly wrong.â€
I contacted Google about its seemingly malfunctioning autocomplete suggestions and received the following response: “Our search results are a reflection of the content across the web. This means that sometimes unpleasant portrayals of sensitive subject matter online can affect what search results appear for a given query. These results don’t reflect Google’s own opinions or beliefs – as a company, we strongly value a diversity of perspectives, ideas and cultures.â€
Google isn’t just a search engine, of course. Search was the foundation of the company but that was just the beginning. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, now has the greatest concentration of artificial intelligence experts in the world. It is expanding into healthcare, transportation, energy. It’s able to attract the world’s top computer scientists, physicists and engineers. It’s bought hundreds of start-ups, including Calico, whose stated mission is to “cure death†and DeepMind, which aims to “solve intelligenceâ€.
And 20 years ago it didn’t even exist. When Tony Blair became prime minister, it wasn’t possible to Google him: the search engine had yet to be invented. The company was only founded in 1998 and Facebook didn’t appear until 2004. Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are still only 43. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is 32. Everything they’ve done, the world they’ve remade, has been done in the blink of an eye.
But it seems the implications about the power and reach of these companies is only now seeping into the public consciousness. I ask Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation, whether it was the recent furore over fake news that woke people up to the danger of ceding our rights as citizens to corporations. “It’s kind of weird right now,†she says, “because people are finally saying, ‘Gee, Facebook and Google really have a lot of power’ like it’s this big revelation. And it’s like, ‘D’oh.’â€
MacKinnon has a particular expertise in how authoritarian governments adapt to the internet and bend it to their purposes. “China and Russia are a cautionary tale for us. I think what happens is that it goes back and forth. So during the Arab spring, it seemed like the good guys were further ahead. And now it seems like the bad guys are. Pro-democracy activists are using the internet more than ever but at the same time, the adversary has gotten so much more skilled.â€