Here s an interesting piece. It starts by comparing machine decision making to human decision making:
Algorithms, in the broad sense of the word, have several advantages over humans when it comes to decision-making.
- Humans routinely consider factors that aren't relevant and ignore those that are.
- They change how much they weight different variables over time and let emotion and hunches influence those changes.
It goes on ... and got a mea culpa from me ...
- Algorithms aren't perfect, either. But here's the funny thing:
- Massey's research shows that people tend to be much less tolerant of software errors than of their own flubs.
Ummm, yeah, describes me. D'oh.
Well worth a few minutes of your time!