A laboratory study that investigates how algorithms come into existence.
Algorithms--often associated with the terms big data, machine learning, or artificial intelligence--underlie the technologies we use every day, and disputes over the consequences, actual or potential, of new algorithms arise regularly. In this book, Florian Jaton offers a new way to study computerized methods, providing an account of where algorithms come from and how they are constituted, investigating the practical activities by which algorithms are progressively assembled rather than what they may suggest or require once they are assembled.
Author(s): Florian Jaton
Series: Inside Technology
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: xiv+386
The Constitution of Algorithms: Ground-Truthing, Programming, Formulating
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Negative Invisibilities
Why “Constitution” (And Not Simply “Construction”)?
A Laboratory Study
Courses of Action
Three Gerund Parts (But Potentially More)
I Ground-Truthing
1 Studying Computer Scientists
The Lab
Collecting Materials
A Torturous Interlude
Algorithm, You Say?
2 A First Case Study
Entering the Lab’s Cafeteria
Backstage Elements: Saliency Detection and Digital Image Processing
Reframing Saliency
Constructing a New Ground Truth
Almost Accepted (Yet Rejected)
Problem Oriented and/or Axiomatic
II Programming
3 Von Neumann’s Draft, Electronic Brains, and Cognition
A Report and Its Consequences
The Psychology of Programming (And Its Limits)
Putting Cognition Back to Its Place
4 A Second Case Study
Presentation of the Empirical Materials
Aligning Inscriptions
Technical Detours
Attached to a Scenario
III Formulating
5 Mathematicsas a Science
Where Is the Math?
Written Claims of Relative Conviction Strengths
Resisting Trials, Becoming Facts
Flat Laboratories
Mathematicable
Formulating: A Definition
6 A Third Case Study
Presentation of the Empirical Materials
Ground-Truthing—Formulating
Reaching a Gaussian Function
Formulating—Programming
The (Varying) Reality of Machine Learning
Conclusion
Catching a Glimpse, Inflating the Unknown
An Insurgent Document
An Impetus to Be Pursued
Glossary
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Conclusion
References
Index
Back Matter
