Kevin Slavin – The new code in town

Read Time:2 Minute, 17 Second

Video game developer Kevin Slavin

gives a TED talk on how the algorithm

is changing the world

I was never much of a math guy at school, although as an adult I am fascinated on how science has used math to deceipher and describe the world and universe we live in, I wish could have had a math teacher like Kevin Slavin.

In the 15-minute TED video below, game developer Kevin Slavin explains how formulas are not just beginning to control aspects of our lives like Netflix recommendations and Wall Street trading, but also how we are quite literally changing our architecture and shape of the earth to accommodate them.

Algorithms drive Google search, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook. Slavin suggests a greater understanding of these formulas because he sees them as a third co-evolutionary force in nature, which is “terraforming the earth with algorithmic efficiency.”

Trading on Wall Street is run by physicists, algorithms move 70 percent of the American stock market, Slavin describes “the flash crash of 2:45,” in which nearly a tenth of the stock market disappeared in 2010, only to recover it 20 minutes later.

These glitches in the matrix, so to speak, or what Slavin calls “algorithms locked in conflict without any adult supervision,” can occur in cultural scenarios too. Amazon inadvertently charged $1.7 million for an ordinary science book – a steal compared to a few hours later, when the price jumped to $23 million. A result of competing algorithms fighting for supremacy.

British firm Epagogix is taking this concept to Hollywood, using algorithms to predict what makes a hit movie.

It takes a bunch of metrics – the script, plot, stars, location – and crunches them all together with the box office takings of similar films to work out how much money it will make. The system has, according to chief executive Nick Meaney, “helped studios to make decisions about whether to make a movie or not”.

In the case of one project – which had been assigned a $250 million production cost – the algorithm worked out that it would only take $50 million at the box office, meaning it simply wasn’t worth making.

In his book, The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser questions how far Google’s data-crunching algorithm go in harvesting our personal data and shaping the web we see accordingly.

Meanwhile, a recent study by psychologists at Columbia University found that reliance on search engines for answers is actually changing the way humans think.

“Since the advent of search engines, we are reorganizing the way we remember things. Our brains rely on the internet for memory in much the same way they rely on the memory of a friend, family member or co-worker,” said report author Betsy Sparrow.