Governing Algorithms: A Provocation Piece

Solon Barocas
[email protected]

Sophie Hood
[email protected]

Malte Ziewitz
[email protected]

New York University

March 29, 2013
Paper prepared for the Governing Algorithms conference,
May 16-17, 2013, at New York University
1. Algorithms have developed into somewhat of a modern myth. They compet[e] for our living
rooms (Slavin 2011), determine how a billion plus people get where theyre going (McGee
2011), have already written symphonies as moving as those composed by Beethoven (Steiner
2012), allow self-determined action on the Internet but also contain aspects of control over this
action (Institute for Media Archeology 2011), and free us from sorting through multitudes of
irrelevant results (Spring 2011). How do they do all this, and more? What exactly are
algorithms doing, and what are the implications? Can an algorithm do anything? And who or
what are algorithms anyway?
2. This provocation piece addresses the recent rise of algorithms as an object of interest in
research, policy, and practice. It does so through a series of provocations that aim to trouble the
coherence of the algorithm as an analytic category and to challenge some of the assumptions that
characterize current debates. The goal of this piece is thus to stimulate discussion and provide a
critical backdrop against which the Governing Algorithms conference can unfold. It asks whether
and how we can turn the problem of algorithms into an object of productive inquiry.
Algorithms, the very idea
3. To judge from the steady increase in algorithm-themed workshops, conference sessions, and
media mentions over the past twelve months, algorithms have become a hot topic (indeed, this
very conference bears testimony to that). Examples include a recent double session on The
Politics of Algorithms at the Annual Meeting of the Social Studies of Science (4S); a session on
Automated Trading that picked up on very similar issues in finance; related workshops on
Code and Control in Online Spaces in Hamburg and Algorithms and Markets at the London
School of Economics; blogs like Culture Digitally that regularly write about algorithms and
#algopop that tracks their appearance in popular culture; a new research project on
Algorithmic Living at the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing; myriad
press articles on everything from algorithmic matchmaking to algorithms human helpers; and a
series of books, including Automate This (Steiner 2012) and The Black Box Society
(Pasquale, forthcoming). How may we account for this growing interest in algorithms?

4. This question seems even more pressing in light of the well-known tendency in scholarship
and practice to proclaim new eras, ages, or societies whenever new technologies allow (cf.
Woolgar 2002). Earlier instantiations of such cyberbole comprised the Dot com era, Web
2.0, user-generated content, and big data. Are algorithms just another fad in a series of
grandiose claims about purportedly new and revolutionary technologies? What explains their
sudden claim to fame? Why have commentators rallied around this term?
5. In 2004, Lorraine Daston called for research devoted to the history and mythology (in the
sense of Roland Barthes) of the algorithm (Daston 2004: 362). She herself has taken up this call,
recently telling a history that shows how, [i]n the models of game theory, decision theory,
artificial intelligence, and military strategy, the algorithmic rules of rationality replaced the selfcritical judgments of reason (Daston 2013). Matthew Jones has also recently begun work on the
history of data mining, examining its growth as a fundamental new form of technical expertise
in business and scientific research (Jones 2013). These explorations of the genesis of
algorithmic thinking have involved periodizing the algorithm, showing how its particular place
in both practice and discourse has changed with time. What can we learn from this history and
from the idea that algorithms have experienced distinct periods of change and consolidation?
6. Where some narrowly conceive of algorithms as technology (Clifton, Mulligan and
Ramakrishnan 2006), others understand algorithms as a particular form of decision-making
(Citron 2007; Gandy 2010) or an epistemology onto itself (Breiman 2001; Hey, Tansley, and
Tolle 2009). Still others take a more expansive view, conceiving of algorithms as a particular
form of rationality, symptomatic of a general mode of social ordering (Beer 2009; Lyon 2003).
And then there are those who see algorithms as a sociotechnical process (Canhoto 2007). Rather
than decry the ambiguity around algorithms as a term of art, perhaps we should embrace it. What
do we gain by accepting that algorithms are, in fact, multiple?
7. To cite a recent essay, for example, Tarleton Gillespie identifies six dimensions of what he
termed public relevance algorithms: patterns of inclusion, cycles of anticipation, the
evaluation of relevance, the promise of algorithmic objectivity, entanglement with practice,
and the production of calculated publics (Gillespie forthcoming). Are these dimensions
particular to public relevance algorithms? Or are other types of algorithms similarly imbued
with, for example, the promise of algorithmic objectivity? Furthermore, how might one
conceptualize public relevance algorithms in contrast to other types of algorithms? If one were
to create a typology of algorithms, what types would there be?
8. Gillespie focuses on the criteria that algorithms consider and the particular weights assigned to
those criteria. This makes sense when the research question is how to compute relevance
(Gillespie forthcoming). But this also may give the misleading impression that algorithms
involve express criteria and explicit weighing, when oftentimes they only involve a preference
for certain kinds of patterns or structure in the data. If relevance is determined by what counts as
a pattern, then should we be studying the patterns that different algorithms prefer? Might we
distinguish between different algorithmic genres, based upon these pattern differences?

Methods, knowledge, expertise

9. There is a puzzling tension at the heart of much current reasoning about algorithms. On the
one hand, algorithms are invoked as powerful entities that govern, judge, sort, regulate, classify,
influence, or otherwise discipline the world. On the other hand, algorithms are portrayed as
strangely elusive and inscrutable, orin factas virtually unstudiable (Van Couvering 2007;
Roehle 2010). Taken together, these claims open up a tempting space in which algorithms can
serve as placeholders or blank figures (Hetherington 1999). What is it that makes them so
amenable to all kinds of claims, especially about technology and politics?
10. This brings up the closely related question of specificity. A simple test would go like this:
would the meaning of the text change if one substituted the word algorithm with computer,
software, machine, or even god? What specifically about algorithms causes people to
attribute all kinds of effects to them?
11. Sometimes authors try to circumvent these tensions by prefacing their analyses with all kinds
of disclaimers. A common strategy are statements that assure the reader that, of course, the text
is not to be read as suggesting an all-too-simple view of algorithms, especially not a
deterministic one. It does not take long, however, until these good intentions are jettisoned and
various capacities are attributed to algorithms, which tend to form the subject of a sentence.
Algorithms do this, algorithms do that. Why are we drawn into this way of speaking? How can
we resist it? Against this backdrop, is it possible to study algorithms in a meaningful way and
if so, how?
12. Ian Bogost has asked us to imagine what it would mean to acknowledge that the perception
and experience of other beings [including computers] remains outside our grasp, yet available to
speculation thanks to evidence that emanates from their withdrawn cores like radiation around
the event horizon of a black hole (Bogost 2012). In conceiving of algorithms in this way, we
concede that the algorithms logic may not be available to usnot because its concealed, but
because its entirely beyond our view. Contrast this with the traditional metaphor of a black box,
whose inner workings are hidden from view even though the box itself may be visible. What
would the study of algorithms look like if we accepted that algorithms are inscrutable because
theres actually nothing to see? What metaphors are most useful for making sense of this?
13. Often, these questions are framed in terms of disciplines and expertise. How do you study
algorithms if you dont know math? Shouldnt you take a class in computer science first?
Understanding algorithms as highly technical concepts suggests the existence of a certain kind of
expert or rather, algorithmic experts. What does such boundary-drawing do? What skills are
needed to study algorithms? Who counts as an expert and who doesnt?
14. Some suggest that there are different ways of studying algorithms. For example, at a recent
workshop a scholar suggested that there could be a technical approach that studies algorithms as
computer science; a sociological approach that studies algorithms as the product of interactions
among programmers and designers; a legal approach that studies algorithms as a figure and agent
in law; and a philosophical approach that studies the ethics of algorithms. Compartmentalizing
the study of algorithms into disciplines may reduce complexity and, in fact, discipline the

discourse. But what are the risks involved in this division of labor? Would an interdisciplinary
study of algorithms be fruitful? How would it work?
15. Further, questions abound about the distinction between algorithms and data. Access to
an algorithm does not reveal what discoveries that algorithm might facilitate because those
discoveries depend as much on the datasets features as on the pattern-discovery mechanisms. In
other words, a better sense of how discoveries can be made would be of little help in assessing
what discoveries can be made. This upends the common notion that access to the source code of
software grants full access to the softwares functionality. Does the study of algorithms therefore
require a kind of symmetry, looking at the discovery procedure and parameters (the software
code) along with the full range of inputs to that procedure (the dataset)? How can we develop a
method of analysis that takes this mutual dependence into account?
Problems and solutions, success and failure
16. Are we studying the transposition of certain questions into problems that can be solved by
formalized rules? Is our analytic object the practice of making something computable? Should
we scrutinize that practice? And should algorithms be subject to more or less scrutiny in different
contexts, such as high frequency trading, predictive policing, retail marketing, political
campaigns, and medical diagnosis?
17. The payoff and promise of algorithms has been the overriding focus of the business and
popular writing on the topic. But a focus on success often obscures the difficulties with which
those successes were earned and the uncertain process by which they were achieved. Instances
of failure challenge what this literature often describes as the inherent potential of algorithms to
act on big data, but they also reveal the challenges of getting algorithms to work in practice.
What if the very possibility of addressing a problem algorithmically were not taken for granted?
What might we learn from research that instead focused on poorly formed questions and failed
implementationsproblems and projects that dont go anywhere? While some have already
challenged the way that data mining companies present their claims to efficacy (Danna and
Gandy 2002), new research might look at the way these companies frame the problems to which
they then promise a solution. Rather than challenging the claims to efficacy, this work could
reveal how problems are made suitable for an algorithmic solution in the first place. What
could be gained from such an approach?
18. A good example of the challenges of thinking about algorithms in terms of problems and
solutions is the field of data mining. Where data mining algorithms now figure as a response to
information overload, they actually predated their current demand (Frawley et al. 1996). In fact,
this demand had to be created by announcing and explaining the promise of such algorithmic
procedures. Thus, ironically, the techniques that many now see as the logical response to the data
deluge far preceded the apparent flood. In many cases, the basic algorithms that power even
contemporary data mining applications date to as early as the post-war period. What do we gain
by rejecting tidy accounts that suggest that the data motivate the mining?

19. We seem to have pivoted from a discourse of overload to a discourse of opportunity.

Algorithms have turned an unmanageable flood into a reservoir of ideas. When, why, and how
does this happen?
Agency, automation, accountabilities
20. In 1989, Peter Slezak announced the advent of an era of scientific discovery by computer
that is totally isolated from all social and cultural factors whatever (Slezak 1989: 563). In a
much discussed article, he suggested:
The work I will describe involves computer programs being developed in the
burgeoning interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, and specifically within
artificial intelligence (AI). The claim I wish to advance is that these programs
constitute a pure or socially uncontaminated instance of inductive inference, and
are capable of autonomously deriving classical scientific laws from the raw
observational data. For example, given the rough or noisy data used by Robert
Boyle 1660, one program is reported to have no difficulty finding the law relating
gas pressure and volume. (Slezak 1989: 563-564)
Not surprisingly, Slezaks claims met fierce resistance. Even though this debate took place more
than 20 years ago, it points to an interesting dynamic. Specifically, there appears to be a longstanding fascination with mechanizing discovery (for a recent example, see Anderson 2008). The
idea of delegating the production of knowledge to machines has repeatedly attracted the attention
of researchers and analysts. What is it about these operations that make them seem so smart
and autonomous? Are we witnessing just another iteration of this dream and its debunking, or
is there something different this time around?
21. Algorithms seem to involve two related, but very different forms of automation. In the first
instance, they automate the process of subjecting data to analysis, undertaking tasks that would
be impossible to perform manually. But the results of these analyses help to automate a second
and very different set of operations: decision-making. For example, in sussing out what seem like
the signs of creditworthiness through rote computation, algorithms also make the decision to
issue credit amenable to automation. What can we learn by paying closer attention to the
differences between these kinds of automation and the relationship between the two?
22. This also raises questions of agency and control. Who are the arbiters of these (potentially)
brave new algorithms? If Google engineers design a search algorithm in a certain way, do they
thereby assert authority over more than the algorithm? Are engineers arbiters of algorithms? Are
algorithms arbiters of how information flows within public spheres? And might the transitive
property apply, i.e. does that make engineers of algorithms the arbiters again? Or do some
algorithms have a species of autonomy? Generally speaking, to what extent can we regard
accountability as transitive and mobile across these various entities? Where should
accountability lie when an algorithm goes awry and how could this accountability be engineered
(Felten 2012)?

23. One way to look at these issues is in terms of accountability relations (Woolgar & Neyland,
forthcoming). Rather than taking the identity of actors for granted, the focus here is on how the
objects and subjects of accountability come about. Accountability, thus, appears as a relational
phenomenon that does not only establish obligations, but also establishes those who carry them.
Algorithms are prime candidates for such attributions. For example, by portraying them as
autonomous decision-makers, their operators can defer accountability. Similar to invocations of
technical failure, responsibility and blame tend to be put on the algorithm. So how do
algorithms become accountabilia (Ziewitz 2011) objects for the deferral of accountability?
How do they shift and change existing networks of accountability?
Secrecy, obscurity, inscrutability
24. Users encounter algorithms every day in locations far less obvious than a search bar.
However, they are often unaware that algorithms are at work. For example, one may request
ones credit score without being privy to the way it was produced. But even if these algorithms
were somehow more manifest, would we find that they are nonetheless inscrutable? What if
some algorithms are so complex that they are inherently unknowable? What would it mean to
even claim to understand an algorithm: knowledge of its foundational assumptions, its inner
logic, its likely effects?
25. Unsurprisingly, a persistent complaint among those studying settings in which algorithms
appear salient are the difficulties involved in knowing them (cf. Hargittai 2000, Introna and
Nissenbaum 2000, Machill, Neuberger and Schindler 2003, Van Couvering 2007, Roehle 2010).
Often, these difficulties are expressed in terms of secrecy. Algorithms, the argument goes, are
closely guarded trade secrets. Revealing the secret sauce would either open doors for
manipulation or competition. Interestingly, for those who work with algorithms on a day-to-day
basis, secrecy presents itself as a slightly different problem. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
consultants, for example, differentiate themselves from their competitors by claiming exclusive
knowledge about the inner workings of the engine. At the same time, however, an often voiced
opinion goes as follows: Even if you had Larry and Sergey at this table, they would not be able
to give you a recipe for how a specific search results page comes about (cf. Ziewitz 2012). So
what if the secret behind all this is that there is no secret? How can we rethink the so-called
secrecy problem to make the issue more productive?
26. The inscrutability of certain algorithms presents interesting legal conundrums, too. Although
trade secret definitions differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, in most of the United States, for
information to be considered a trade secret, that information must be not generally known
or readily ascertainable (Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Section 1.4). The information must also
be the subject of [reasonable] efforts to maintain its secrecy (Uniform Trade Secrets Act,
Section 1.4). Yet if information (here, an algorithm) is inherently secret, how does that alter the
application of this definition? Is an inscrutable algorithm necessarily unknownand is this the
same as being kept secret? Is a company making reasonable efforts under the circumstances to
maintain [an algorithms] secrecy if the algorithm is automatically secret?
27. The path by which algorithm-wielding actors arrive at conclusions can be circuitous in the
extreme: it involves inducing a rule from an entire populations behavior that can then be applied
6

to specific individuals. Further, in detecting subtle patterns within a dataset, algorithms can
reveal the many different variablesand the particular weighing of those variablesthat
correlate with characteristics that cannot be learned directly. What can be known about the
individual now depends as much on what others say and do as what the individual might be
willing to reveal. How does this alter our understandings of privacy?
Normativity, values, bias
28. Is there such a thing as algorithmic neutrality or impartiality? Or is such neutrality
necessarily illusory? Why might the public desire neutral or impartial algorithms? What
values animate the urge for such neutrality? Fairness? Justice? What do those terms mean within
an algorithmic context? Yet how does one ascertain whether an algorithm is good or bad,
fair or unfair, just or unjust? Good for whom? Fair to what end? Just according to
whom? Whoor whatdecides? May these values be embodied in an algorithms design,
however dynamic? Or must one assess the outcomes produced by an algorithm in assessing the
algorithm itself?
29. Additionally, how do technical understandings of good and bad interface with philosophical
understandings of good and bad? Are the problems that get solved by algorithms those to which
algorithms present an obvious solution? If so, does this crowd out efforts to address other issues
of social or political significance that are less amenable to algorithmic solutions? Might technical
and non-technical understandings of what is normatively good become conflated?
30. There is a history of diagnosing bias in computer systems. Batya Friedman and Helen
Nissenbaum (1996), for instance, consider algorithms as a possible source of technical bias and
suggest that freedom from bias should be counted among the select set of criteriaincluding
reliability, accuracy, and efficiencyaccording to which the quality of systems in use in society
should be judged (330). But what is it to say that an algorithm is biasedand how would we
know? What counts as unbiased? And how is bias diagnosed in practice? Can we abandon the
idea that theres a way to avoid bias while still insisting that its worth diagnosing bias?
31. Can algorithms enhance or detract from human morality? Can the automation of algorithms
help humans with bounded rationality? Might we adopt algorithms to bind ourselves to the mast
in a variety of contexts? Some have argued that algorithms will know us better than we know
ourselves and that they will allow us to be more true to ourselves:
If we have given up autonomy, it was only the autonomy to make poor choices,
go to bad restaurants with people we turn out not to like much, buy boring novels,
listen to ear splitting music, engage in activities where costs outweigh benefits. I
am actually more free now than ever before because my true selfthe self that
labored under misconceptions, limited information and emotional noiseis now
facilitated by powerful and benevolent technology (Ford 2005, 1578-1579)
But in predicting more and more of our interests, will algorithms start to change them? Will we
lose control of our own morality by relying on algorithms?

32. Might algorithms have their own morality? In the case of self-driving cars, for example,
scholars and the public have started to ask about the moral choices those cars will face (Marcus
2012; Walker Smith 2012). Philosophers have long pondered the moral autonomy and
culpability of machines, but they have tended to focus on extreme situations, often of life and
death. What kind of work is there to be done on the morality of far more mundane algorithms?
What might a moral algorithm look like?
33. One could also argue that algorithms embody a profound deference to precedent. According
to this line of reasoning, algorithms draw on the past to act on (and enact) the future. Does this
result in a self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating system, where individuals are forever burdened
by a history that they are encouraged to repeat and from which they are unable to escape? Does
deference to past patterns augment path dependence, reduce individual choice, and result in
cumulative disadvantage (Gandy 2009)? On a larger scale, does this deference to precedent
entrench economic stratification and decrease social mobility?
Rules, regulations, resistance
34. The idea of decision rules has long been subject to critical enquiry in a variety of fields. In an
old, but still fascinating study, Lawrence Wieder examined the convict code operative in a
California halfway house and tried to understand how rules like do not snitch come to work in
everyday practice (Wieder 1974). Perhaps not surprisingly, it was during moments in which
these rules were mobilized that order became recognizableand not the other way around.
Instead of simply guiding determinations of good and bad, the code enabled a range of
interactions about these very questions. How might these insights apply to predominant
conceptions of algorithms as technologically-embedded rules? What would it mean to study
algorithms in practice (as Wieder studied rules in practice), and not just in theory?
35. A focus on practice squares with a recent move by a number of legal and policy scholars who
advocate a move away from the regulation of the collection, circulation, and crunching of data to
a regulation of the uses to which data and algorithms are put. Tal Zarsky (2004) and others have
argued that we need to regulate use because we cant regulate collection or analysis, whose
implications or effects cant be known in advance. Goldman makes the most forceful argument
to this effect:
Even the worst motivations do not make inconsequential behavior consequential
[] Data mining is not the problem; the problem is bad uses of mined data, and
that is where our focus should lie. (Goldman 2006, 229)
On this account, the moral standing of a project that relies on algorithmic processes is entirely
independent of the projects motivations and even the algorithmically derived insights that make
the project possible. Is this approach sensible? Or might we be equally concerned with the
unintended consequences of algorithmic processes? Or with, perhaps, the consequences of
making something amenable to an algorithmic process in the first place?
36. Seemingly, algorithms could be a boon to due process because they formalize decisionmaking procedures. Consistently rendered decisions, on the basis of articulable and fixed criteria,
8

are the hallmark of the kind of fairness that due process attempts to ensure. And even where the
move to algorithms fails to purge bias from the decision-making procedure, it may at least have
the salutary effect of making bias more evident. At the same time, algorithms may involve rules
of such complexity that they defy attempts to trace their reasoning. Is this the perfect perversion
of due process: the uniform application of an inarticulable rule?
37. This also raises important questions about the relationship between algorithms and rules.
May decision-making ever be reduced to the rote application of particular rules? Or is legal
interpretation necessarily more complex (Dworkin, 1986)? Legal scholars and judges have
argued persuasively that legal interpretation does not entail straightforward textual analysis;
decisions are more than mere calls of ball or strike (e.g. Posner, 2012, 2006). Similarly,
wouldnt decision-making algorithms entail more than straightforward coding, thus timeshifting
key interpretive questions? If algorithms were to render decisions, would the locus of legal
reasoning shift to the coding of those algorithms?
38. Nevertheless, these ideas underscore the fact that algorithms are deployed in a variety of
contexts, some more intuitively troubling than others. The potential and pitfalls of an
increasingly algorithmic worldfrom financial markets to facial recognition softwarebeg the
question of whether legal and policy changes are needed to regulate our changing environment.
Should we regulate, or further regulate, algorithms in certain contexts? What would such
regulation look like? Is it even possible? What ill effects might regulation itself cause? Given the
ubiquity of algorithms, do they, in a sense, regulate us? And what would it mean to resist them?
Conclusion
39. What, then, do we talk about when we talk about governing algorithms?

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