Does My Algorithm Have a Mental Health Problem?

bal-cheng (42)in #psychology • 6 years ago

Is my car hallucinating? Is the algorithm that runs the police surveillance system in my city paranoid? Marvin the android in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had a pain in all the diodes down his left-hand side. Is that how my toaster feels?

This all sounds ludicrous until we realise that our algorithms are increasingly being made in our own image. As we’ve learned more about our own brains, we’ve enlisted that knowledge to create algorithmic versions of ourselves. These algorithms control the speeds of driverless cars, identify targets for autonomous military drones, compute our susceptibility to commercial and political advertising, find our soulmates in online dating services, and evaluate our insurance and credit risks. Algorithms are becoming the near-sentient backdrop of our lives.

Consumer behavior is a hotbed of psychological research as it ties together issues of communication (advertising and marketing), identity (you are what you buy), social status, decision-making, and mental and physical health. Corporations use findings about consumer behavior to determine how best to market products. You can put the information to use to consciously decide what, when, and why to buy.

Expanding your social network beyond your familiar circle of friends can have surprising benefits. It's those weak ties that bring fresh ideas and unexpected opportunities: a job, an apartment, a mate. The Internet is providing new tools for cultivating and capitalizing on those networks; someone you've never met in person could change your life.

Living a healthy life means making lifestyle choices that support your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being. It can be challenging at times, when one facet of your health demands more attention than others, and you must struggle to maintain a good balance. To be of sound body, mind, and spirit, it's important to pay attention to all aspects of health, since your mental, emotional, and spiritual health play a role in your physical health, and vice versa. A state of good health means more than just the absence of a disease or disorder; it also means having the resources to cope with problems and circumstances beyond your control and recover from difficult or troubling situations.
Algorithms such as AlphaGo are entirely different. Their problems are not apparent by looking at their source code. They are embedded in the way that they represent information. That representation is an ever-changing high-dimensional space, much like walking around in a dream. Solving problems there requires nothing less than a psychotherapist for algorithms.