Pervasive personalisation. Two words that describe how algorithms shape our views and behaviour and determine what we see, buy, read online. There’s so much value in personalisation that tech companies are giving away algorithmic tools for free; the actual money lies in the application, in manipulating large population groups. And as this happens, much of societal biases are reinforced online.
Elisa Celis and Nisheeth Vishnoi, professors at Ềcole Polytechnique Fẽdẽrale de Lausanne, Switzerland, propose a framework to de-bias algorithms. They’ve built a prototype for ‘Balanced Search’, to demonstrate how it’s possible to mitigate extreme views and deliver diverse content using novel algorithms.
