Every once in a long while, despite what you may think from reading this blog, somebody steps on one of my many hot-buttons and completely shorts it the fuck out. It really is “a long while” between occurrences; otherwise you would see blatant execrations appearing in the first paragraph of the blog much more frequently than you do. Such a hot-button short circuit happened yesterday when I was watching a segment on 60 Minutes, the venerable CBS news magazine.
Now, I try to watch as little television as possible. For me, sitting through any TV with commercials – even with the wonder that is TIVO – is less fun than surgery without anesthetic. No, that’s not just some hyperbolic analogy designed to make you wince. I have had surgery without having the incision site numbed, so I know whereof I speak. Now you can wince. Nevertheless, I do plop myself down in front of the boob-tube – or whatever appropriate flat screen deprecation is currently in vogue – from time-to-time and veg out in front of some BBC-generated quaintness about what the world should be more like – i.e. Great Britain any time before the rise of the welfare state – or, more to the topic, 60 Minutes.
Not that even that experience is without its pain. The first time I saw 60 Minutes, after having watched essentially no TV for the better part of a decade, I was seriously depressed for a couple of minutes. First, the short-list of seasoned journalists had been almost completely replaced with a cast of celebrities the announcement of whose names chew up the first five minutes of the show. This cavalcade of talking heads includes only Morley Safer and the show’s original token female, Leslie Stahl, from the cast I remember. Lara Logan, whoever she is, is less fun to listen to than Alex Trebeck. Second, they had replaced the old tick-tick-tick stopwatch with a computer generated one. “Why?” is a question I lose sleep over some nights.
Anyway, last night fate had me, a cup of tea, and a large-ish slab of homemade, homegrown-squash cake slathered with similarly decadent cream cheese and butter frosting, sitting in front of the fat-head flat-screen (just to throw one out that better fits the new geometry of televisions) when 60 Minutes came on the air. Or whatever things come on these days. The segments looked like they might have some interest so we fast forwarded to minute 06:00 at which point the show actually started; which raises the additional question of, when they changed the clock, why didn’t they change the name of the show to 60 Minutes, Less the Commercials.
The first story was about robots in the workplace and how in the new and now expanding economy jobs are being created at a record pace. The drawback being that the jobs aren’t being filled by humans, but by robots. In this segment they showed all kinds of robots, but the ones that really grabbed my attention were the robots whose job it was to rummage through a fulfillment warehouse finding the products needed to complete your order and ship it out to you. The robots do this by zipping around, lifting up the shelf containing the product, and carrying the whole shelf over to an actual human – from Central America judging by the people shown – who snatches out your Adult Novelty Item, stuffs it in a plain brown wrapper, and sends it off to UPS. It’s very cool to watch.
In this piece, 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft interviewed Bruce Welty, CEO of Quiet Logistics, the company that runs the warehouse. It was all going great until the following exchange:
60 Minutes (in breathless amazement) – “Nobody has to sit there and tell these robots what to do?”
Bruce Welty – “No, no, it’s all done with algorithms.”
My hot-button was pressed so hard that sparks flew from my ears igniting my squash cake and scaring the cats out of the room.
My disquiet was twofold: First – it isn’t all done with algorithms and, second – by saying it is, Bruce Welty confirmed that he wouldn’t know an algorithm if it jumped up and bit him on the ass. “Algorithm”, it seems, over the past few years has jumped from a mere mathematical term to becoming the latest corporate buzz-speak: a word you use when you want to sound much smarter than you are but, instead, end up sounding like a dope.
There have been other such words and phrases used to give oneself an undeserved intellectual veneer and help meet dates in bars or impress potential investors. In the 1970s it was “computer analysis”, the 1980s gave us “paradigm shift”, the 1990s had the anonymous “straw man”, and the early 2000s gave us the unparalleled “disincentivize”. Now it’s Al Gorithm’s turn.
Look. He made a joke.
Nope, sorry. Al Gorithm (taking liberties with the transliteration) is the name of the guy that came up with the idea of algorithms. Actually, Al – a 9thCentury Persian mathematician by trade – was really named al-Khwarithmi (also a transliteration) and he devised a methodology for handling arithmetic in the Arabic number system which is what we use today. His treatises reached Greece where is name was generified (certain to be the buzz-speak word for the late 2010s) into algorithm. Despite its arithmetically formal origins, the intervening centuries have not been kind to “algorithm” and the word has been reduced to meaning “a definite procedure for solving problems or performing tasks.”
Lest you are inspired to dis beloved Al, remember that he was the most widely respected mathematician of his day and the inventor of that curse to adolescents everywhere: Algebra.
He was the Isaac Newton of the Middle Ages.
Regardless of that, all manner of people are now dragging “algorithm” into casual conversation, using it without knowing what they’re talking about, and sounding more like dopes than they probably are.
A fate I wish for you to avoid.
What the esteemed Mr. Welty meant to say is that the desired behavior for the robots is reduced to a set of rules which are rendered into algorithms, i.e. “if robot B is too close then don’t bump into it”, which are implemented as the computer code which actually controls the robots.
A paragraph which, using a different example, applies equally well to our toaster, and cuts about ten-thousand Cool Points off the behavior of his warehouse robots.
So, using modern parlance, the set of rules, facts, and behaviors that each of us lives our lives by can be reduced to an algorithm. Some of those things are specific to our personal lives, some to work, some to preferences, etc. etc. etc. When you take each of those tiny algorithms – one of my own is shown here – and add them up, you can be seen to be not much more than the sum of your algorithms with a pinch of randomness tossed in. Randomness, by the way, can easily be introduced as part of an algorithm.
This is why robots are so scary.
When it comes down to it, if you can take some of your behaviors – what you do at work for example – and break that down into a series of rules governing your actions, that set of rules can be programmed into, say, a robot, and you’re out of a job. Mr. Welty estimates that each robot displaces about 1.5 human workers.
Here’s another sample algorithm. You can see how easy a decision can be when you break it down into its smallest components. Janet, in this case, has no choice but to stay at home and eat pizza, it’s in her genes, or, more correctly, in her decision making algorithm concerning Ted and Bob and other members of the XY-cursed members of society.
And you, gentle reader, can take advantage of this newfound knowledge to advance your standing in your circle of friends. But be careful, don’t use the word “algorithm” unless you do so correctly. Don’t pull a “welty” and end up sounding like a dope. Do it right and your friends will be in awe.
Say you’re out with a group of friends. Somebody floats the idea of going and getting a pizza. You stare off into space. For a really long time. Hold the stare until everyone is looking at you wondering what the hell you’re doing. Wait until somebody says, “Well?”
“Sure,” you reply. “I just had pizza yesterday but it sounds great.”
“Wow. You really zoned out.” Somebody observes.
“No,” you say. “I was just accessing my decision making algorithm concerning pizza.”
“Ha!” Someone laughs. “You wouldn’t know an algorithm if it jumped up and bit you on the ass.”
“Yes.” A small smile creases your face. “Yes, I would.” You pause for effect.
“And I can show you the bite marks.”