Disempowered by Algorithms

Structural problems caused by the tendency to focus on the artefacts of digitisation can lead to people being disempowered by algorithms. The goal of People Powered Algorithms is to respond to this by developing new approaches aimed at reintroducing people empowerment into the process of digitisation. 

This answers the need to find other ways of returning agency and autonomy to people effected by algorithmic decision-making, where agency is mutually negotiated within the relationships exercised in the use of technology.

Algorithms can bury themselves into everyday social systems that commonly work at a knowledge-level rather than at a data-level. Algorithms carry abstracted or simplified representations of the world, but do not straight-forwardly describe it, but instead operate on that description of the world by projecting a particular type of inference and algorithmic insight across that description of the world. However, when we think of algorithms in everyday life we habitually focus on describing the characteristics of individual artefacts and their direct effects (in this case, the data and the algorithm, bias and explainability). When thinking about digitisation in this way, we miss an opportunity to focus on the deeper structural issues that have an impact on the empowerment relationships governed by these artefacts.