How we lost control to the algorithms, and how to get it back

The human body maintains body temperature, blood pressure, physical balance and a whole host of other essential functions by constantly scanning the environment for changes and immediately responding with appropriate adjustments if and when there is a variation from the norm.

If you think about it, both mechanical and social systems follow a similar approach. Thermostats maintain a constant temperature by instructing an air-conditioning system to cool or heat the room as soon as it detects a change in the ambient air temperature.

Along similar lines, central banks lower interest rates once they detect rising unemployment so that companies can access cheaper credit to invest more and hire more workers.

Each of these systems uses active feedback loops to detect deviations from the norm that trigger corrective responses that can return the system to its equilibrium state.

Wiener’s insight was that this approach—which is manifest in nature—can be applied to learning, adaptation and just about any goal-seeking behaviour in artificial systems.

To better describe this science of control and communication in complex systems, he coined the term ‘cybernetics,’ derived from the Greek word kybernḗtē, meaning a helmsman. Ancient Greeks believed that ships couldn’t be steered by simply pointing them towards their destination.

Instead, the helmsman has to constantly adjust course in response to shifting winds, currents and other variables. Steering is not so much about achieving dominance over the elements as skilfully nudging the vessel towards its destination through a series of micro-adjustments.

Weiner’s work was ahead of its time, anticipating many of the developments in computer science, artificial intelligence (AI) and systems theory that are playing out only now.

It has had an enormous influence over a range of disciplines—from engineering and computer science to psychology, biology and sociology—and helped establish ‘systems thinking’ as a major intellectual framework.

He laid the groundwork for fields like AI, cognitive science and complexity theory and the notion that machines could learn and adapt.

Inspired by his work, economists and managers soon began to describe firms and markets in cybernetic terms, referring to flows of information, feedback circuits and correction loops.

In Chile, the government implemented Project Cybersyn, a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy by creating real-time feedback loops between factories, government planners and workers, so that the government could digitally manage the national economy and enable participative decision-making.

The Soviet Union established its own cybernetic project called OGAS, which established a three-tier network that collected data through thousands of terminals throughout the USSR to establish a unified economic management system.

While Weiner never lived to see his vision of a cybernetic society come into being, he would have been interested to learn that our lives today are influenced at every turn by invisible helmsmen.

The digital applications we have come to depend on for everything we do observe our every action and draw conclusions from them that are later used to influence our actions.

This is how social media applications serve us content designed to hold our attention for as long as possible. It is what advertising engines rely on to shape our consumption choices, so that they can offer us items they know we will find hard to resist.

So effective are these measures that anyone who believes that they still have ‘free will’ online is simply deluded.

When Weiner conceptualized cybernetic social systems, he presumed they would operate under the control of the government.

That it would be the elected representatives of the people who would have their hands on the tiller and get to decide how these real-time feedback loops would be used to determine what behavioural adjustments were to be made.

That is not the case. Governments can do little or nothing to shape how modern cybernetic systems function. All those decisions are made by the private enterprises that control how these digital systems operate. It is they and they alone who get to shape how society functions.

This is not how cybernetics was supposed to work. When societal behaviour is shaped by feedback loops, the direction and nature of those changes must be determined in accordance with democratic principles, not the aims of private enterprise.

This means that the reins must lie firmly in the hands of elected representatives who have been given a mandate by the people and know that should they fail to deliver, they risk not being returned to office.

I am not convinced that a society under the influence of cybernetic systems is a good thing. The idea that our actions can be shaped in ways we cannot control is unnerving, to say the least. But one thing is certain.

If such systems are operating in society, the least we can do is make sure they are not administered by private corporations over whom we citizens have little control.