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SYSTEM_ERROR_JAMES_VACCA

                                             December 16, 2022
                                             Janurary 22, 2023
                                             March    18, 2023

About "System Error" (2021):
                                          SYSTEM_ERROR

From P. 184:

    "James Vacca, who was serving his last term
    [on the New York City Council], had grown
    increasingly concerned that too many public
    decisions were being made on the basis of
    opague algorithmic systems.  ... he was
    deeply troubled that those on the recieving
    end of these decisions were not even aware
    of how they were being made or how they
    might challenge them if they seemed wrong.
    Vacca proposed legislation to mandate that        Didn't happen of
    city agencies publish the source code of all      course, because
    algoritms and allow member os the public to       it *couldn't*
    self-test them by submitting their own data       happen.  It's a
    and getting the results."                         remarkably naive
                                                      understanding of
                                                      this technology:
    The authors quote James Vacca:                    these are AI
                                                      "neural networks"
    "When government institutions utilize             trained up to do
    obsure algoritms, our principle of                something that might
    democratic accountabily are undermined."          sort of make sense,
                                                      but no one really
                                                      knows what they're
                                                      doing or why they
                                                      work.  They're
                                                      *inherently* opague.

                                                      BITWASTES_DUMBGOD

                                                      BITWASTES_METASTASIZED

                     It occurs to me we lead people
                     astray by talking about things           
                     like "the google algorithm":             
                                                              
                     An algorithm is (or was) usually         
                     understood to be a well-understood      ALGORITHM
                     proceedure that could be analyzed,
                     proven correct, etc.

                     You could say that there's an algorithm that
                     *generates* the systems we're using, but the
                     systems themselves don't really run an "algorithm"
                     in this sense.


                         (It is interesting to think that if you
                         required all government software to be
                         based on open, published algorithms, you
                         might-- inadvertantly?-- make this style
                         of "aritificial intelligence" illegal.
                         This might not be *such* a bad thing...)



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