BS BULLETIN:
- Kamala Harris tried to explain how social-media algorithms can narrow what users see — with yellow and pink flowers.
- Harris warned that repeated recommendations can “dumb people down” by assuming their interests don’t extend beyond what they’ve already clicked.
- The former vice president previously played a substantial role in the Biden administration’s work on artificial intelligence.
Kamala Harris has returned to artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence may need a moment to process this.
The former vice president appeared on Thursday’s episode of Off Air with Big Boy, where the conversation turned to AI, social media and the algorithms deciding what millions of Americans see on their screens.
Big Boy asked Harris about the way platforms such as TikTok and Instagram increasingly tailor content to individual users — and whether that could contribute to Americans living in separate information bubbles.
That’s a serious question.
Then the flowers arrived.
Harris warned that people should recognize when an algorithm keeps feeding them similar material because of something they previously viewed.
“Because you looked at it the first time, they’re just going to keep sending it to you,” Harris said, arguing that platforms risk assuming people have no interests beyond what they’ve already seen.
And then came the Kamala Harris School of Computer Science.
She offered the example of somebody looking at a yellow flower and an algorithm concluding that person must therefore want more yellow flowers — without considering that the person’s brain might also be capable of appreciating a pink flower.
Her conclusion: People need to understand how algorithms manipulate what they see and figure out how to “psych it out a bit.”
To be fair, underneath the botanical expedition was a legitimate point. Recommendation systems use signals from people’s behavior to determine what content to serve them next, and Harris was arguing that this can reinforce an increasingly narrow stream of information.
But Harris also isn’t exactly a newcomer to the subject.
As vice president, she was one of the Biden administration’s most senior officials working on AI policy. She represented the United States at the 2023 AI Safety Summit in Britain and participated in administration efforts involving AI companies, safety standards and algorithmic discrimination.
Which makes the flowers even better.
MY QUICK TAKE
Here’s what fascinates me about Kamala Harris: the idea usually isn’t nearly as ridiculous as the journey she takes us on to reach it.
She’s talking about one of the defining technological issues of our time — algorithms quietly learning our habits, narrowing our information diet and potentially helping lock Americans into separate versions of reality.
That’s actually worth discussing.
But somewhere between Silicon Valley and Kamala’s microphone, we ended up standing in a garden debating whether a human brain that enjoys a yellow flower possesses sufficient processing power to contemplate a pink one.
And that’s the gift.
Most politicians take complicated subjects and oversimplify them. Kamala can take a fairly understandable subject and make you wonder whether you missed a prerequisite course.
Somewhere, an algorithm just watched this clip and decided we all need more flowers.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- Mediaite — Harris explains algorithms using flowers
- Foreign Policy — Harris’s record on artificial intelligence
- Roll Call/Factba.se — Biden-Harris administration remarks on artificial intelligence
- American Presidency Project — Harris at the 2023 AI Safety Summit
