Though Anchor Man should never come up in a humanities, class, I’m pulling it in right now. Somewhere near the middle of the film, Ron Burgandy discovers his dog, Baxter, ate an entire wheel of cheese. His reaction? 
Well, that’s essentially my reaction reading about the depth of Netflix movie recommendation algorithm. Sure, it’s invasive, though my life is much easier because of it.
I should probably confess now that I don’t watch Netflix. The principles apply beyond just a genre generator. Like the article mentions, Facebook already uses similar machine learning to generate our feed. Google readvertises products to us, though I’m not sure if they generate new ideas based on our search history. At the very least it’s stored and organized.
In many regards, this customized marketing is intrusive and cause for mild paranoia. My mind quickly descends a slippery slope thinking, “If they can track my movies… what else?” Is there ever a moment where it becomes too much? Morally, do we have a right to privacy? Are we ever able to say, this is private? Are we comfortable allowing private businesses to memorize and then capitalize on our personal preferences?
The rise of machine learning and AI isn’t so much of an if as it is a when. And to tell you the truth, I’m not to angry about it. I already have a hard time making decisions, especially about the mundane. In my media consumption, I’d actually be pretty thrilled if something could consistently refer films to me. Even better if they’re guaranteed to fit my preferences.
I hate deciding what to eat. What if an algorithm kept track of my meals? It could recommend specific changes to my menu, decide the frequency in which I eat certain meals, and even recommend recipes I might not have tried, but could end up loving. I’m still waiting for Goodreads to perfect an algorithm to present me with the perfect book. There may be hundreds of lifetimes worth of books in the Library of Congress, but try telling me that after an hour of browsing the shelves at the library or used bookstore.
If the internet gave us the power to search for anything, machine learning has the potential to present us with anything. Search becomes obsolete in the presence of prediction and direct catering. Am I willing to give up a chunk of my privacy for completely personalized lifestyle? Permission is irrelevant in most circumstances.
The article gave me hope for a human side to machine learning. The algorithm might actually do the deciding, but a human had to start it. “As we worked on the generator, I could tell someone had gone down this road before. A single human brain had had to make the decisions that we had,” the author points out. Yes, the process for deciding was formulaic, but the foundation still rested upon an emotional human reaction to the film. There isn’t true objectivity in judging art.
At the end of the day, such predictive ability doesn’t negate agency. So what if Netflix knows I’d enjoy a maritime romance with a religious twist? I say let it happen. Give me the commodities I’ll relish for my lifestyle. I can always say no.
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