Lesson 2: Examples of algorithm
Lecture:
Some of the algorithms include:
- Recommender algorithms: provide recommendations to you based on your previous choices (e.g. movies you have watched on Netflix).
- Search algorithms: gear the search results to you, based on your search history, cookies, location, etc.
- Sorting algorithms: provide results based on specific relevance criteria, such as a number of relevant keywords, etc.
- Targeting advertisement algorithms: provide ads based on search history and other information about you, such as your age, household income, etc.
These are just some examples of different types of algorithms you might encounter every day. Let’s explore how you might have used them and where you encountered them.
Activity: AI Bingo
Attribution: This activity and discussion questions were adapted from AI Bingo: https://glitch.com/~ai-bingo; AI Bingo nugget by Dominic Orr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Discussion questions:
Choose one of the algorithms you selected during your AI Bingo activity:
- What are the benefits of this specific algorithm for you?
- Does this algorithm use any of the data about you? For what purpose?
- What impact can this specific algorithm have on your everyday life?
- Dyson (2012) states, “Facebook defines who we are, Amazon defines what we want, and Google defines what we think” (p. 308). Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
- Did something surprise you about this algorithm?
Self-assessment
