klomp

Inspiration for this workshop comes from mathematician and algorithm expert Cathy O’Neil. In her book ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’ she emphasises that an algorithm is a decision process embedded in code, it’s an opinion camouflaged in technology and a tool that predicts success. Key questions are: who determines what ’success’ is? And how do they benefit from it?

Is ‘success’ 'for the YouTube algorithm that viewers have an unwinding video watching experience? And is the succes of the TikTok algorithm that we learn new cool dances? …Or it it something completely different?

Let’s draw and find out.

In the workshop participants are asked to come up with an algorithm for an interpersonal action.

It soon becomes clear that even the simplest human interactions are more complex than you think and that many questions arise that cannot be answered simply with yes or no. But when it comes to inconvenient matters, we’re tempted to outsource many tasks to our 'binary friends'. Whether it's an algorithm for bringing bad news or whether your child can have another cookie, sometimes they make for an easy excuse: ‘Computer says no.’

This workshop lets us take a critical look at our algorithms and the responsibilities they entail.