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Ask HN: Why do we put up with the corruption of the word “algorithm”?

1 points by orblivion ↗ HN
When people use the phrase in pop media, they usually mean something like "recommendation engine". Sure, it probably has some sort of novel algorithm involved, but you could just as well call it a "program". It doesn't sufficiently describe what you think you're describing.

It's a very broad and basic term, and now lay people are given the impression that the word means some sort of AI. They sometimes even half-jokingly talk about "The Algorithm" as some sort of mystical force.

I'm shocked that I'm basically the only computer person I know of who complains about this. No math people either! And at this point tech people seem to be misusing it.

I know this is a waste of energy and "algorithm" will go the way of "literally" but I don't want to go down without a fight.

5 comments

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smoldesu
I frankly don't care. Whenever I hear someone complain about how "the algorithm" is trying to feed them liberal/centrist/conservative propaganda, I just sip my drink and let them tire themselves out trying to explain how awful this purported all-seeing AI is. More often than not, it becomes apparent that their repeated interaction with posts they despise is what drives their unhealthy recommendation loop.
nonrandomstring
Hacker now means criminal. Crypto now means digital money. AI now means any three lines of code that take input and store something. As Wittgenstein put it, words don't have "meaning" the way phenomenologists think of meaning... they stand in for feelings the same way the Ooooowwch!! represents the event of hitting your finger with a hammer. Once people have lazily bound these noises to vague confusions and prejudices, there's no unbinding them.

Let "algorithm" go and accept that in most people's minds, knowing swap-sort makes you a sinister Illuminati manipulator, and using rot-13 makes you a criminal mastermind who trades small children for bitcoins on the darknet.

orblivion
Hacker and Crypto are semi-slang. Seeing a basic technical term misunderstood this way is just cringe. AI might be another worthy crusade but I'm not an AI person.

Honestly I don't think it's so much the loss of the word as much as the people are being mislead about its meaning. If they knew some of them might use a different word.

nonrandomstring
Here's an idea.

When I taught "Algorithms and Data-Structures" to first years, it seemed right to spend a moment explaining that it was a Persian (Iraqi) philosopher from Baghdad called Al-Khwarizmi that the whole thing was named after.

They were really interested and totally latched on to that. Even if they forgot everything about binary trees and depth-first, students would use any opportunity to demonstrate a treasured factoid of knowledge that it was "An Arab bloke called Ali Charisma who discovered algorithms".

Maybe you can throw that swerve-ball at people who blame algorithms on the government and say Al Gore invented them.

orblivion
Oh man that could really be something. Al Gore invented the Internet after all.