A Chainsaw in the Garden

 

    I've mentioned before that a common practice of mine is to read back through old posts before writing. Which is a task that will become increasingly difficult as time goes on. But in this instance, I also noticed that some of my writing can read as goofily embellished or sophomoric critiques of tech phenomenon. It is my hope moving forward that this will become more focused and informed. I write to learn in a way. So bear with me.

    That said, I want to first own up to some overlooked research I could have been doing in my April 27th post regarding my YouTube content curation and search suggestions. You know how there are those "Hey Brian, you can just..." moments in your life that could save you months of frustration if you'd only just looked? I like those. They're an opportunity not to take yourself too seriously by of laughing at it, alone, at your desk, procrastinating at 9pm.

    Yeah, you just click the three dots under the bottom right corner of the thumbnail image. You get a dropdown. You can choose "Not Interested" or "Don't Recommend Channel." That's it. Suffice it to say, my first 3 weeks of the May "YouTube Be Peaceful" campaign were uneventful. 

    I used my original, personal, unpaid account for my Bears watching. I only jumped back to my new formal, paid account for uninterrupted ambient noise and binaural waves videos at night. So what did I get on my formal account? A monolithic culture of Buddhist and Shinto cultural lectures that would tie my uncle John up for months? Nope. Just more ambient noise videos.

    Once, I did transgress and look up Tyler Scott, a 4th round steal at wide receiver for the Bears (by most accounts, he hasn't played a snap as a Bear). Highlights were impressive though. You don't jam him at the line of scrimmage you're gonna be in for a world of hurt trying to catch him. But for that one-time indulgence, what is the result?

    Little videos would pop up every once in a while. One the second row, three from the left after two, somehow different videos of thunder and rain noises, there was a 6 minute clip of a couple other wide receivers that went in this draft. Out come the handy 3-dotted pruning shears and I go to remove it from my feed.

    But now I'm faced with a curious choice. Do I choose to not have the channel recommended to me? Or do I just say I'm not interested? Both are true (or at least they should be). But which will accurately communicate to YouTube's algorithms, heretofore referred to as "AL," will understand I am trying to curb a bad habit?

    I chose to block the channels hoping that YouTube will take it as a sign to AL that I'm saying "I don't want anything to do with a channel dedicated solely to sports," not just "prevent all videos from this profile from appearing in this other profile's list of videos. Beep Boop Bop Boop Beep." One communicates a concept and once communicates a fact.

    So how to know which order is being followed? Well, we'd have to think about what it would look like in a week if it worked versus what it would look like if AL didn't get me. Let's say AL interprets my consistent search history of constant new wave background noise designed to expand the brain and heal the body through sleep as the guiding factor in its recommendations. I'd say the act of one isolated football search followed by blocking every sports channel in sight for the next three days would be taken to mean "Outlier. Stop recommending sports."

    One the other hand, suppose AL doesn't get it. AL deletes Bar Room Sports from my recommended channels only moves on to Chicago Bears Now with Harrison Graham (shout out to Harrison for the killer draft coverage). As long as that 4th round bug remains a non-zero percentage of my search history, I will be seeing sports. 

    Maybe it's a proportionate amount, decreasing as time goes on and search queries accumulate. I would essentially be dragging the line of best fit my data suggests further and further from the distraction of football every day I did not search it. Maybe it's cross referenced with a later search of how to animate buttons in Webflow and starts showing me websites about football that were made in Webflow.

    In the past I've described the data indicating my personality to entities like AL as an entanglement to be made less restrictive. But I think a better metaphor would be a garden of flowering vines. It's a lot of pruning. But knowing how my actions are being interpreted feels clumsy. Like I might have the wrong tool. I want to clip rogue vines so the plant doesn't expand too much and has more resources for nicer flowers. But nature is not calling the shots, telling you how your plant will grow. AL is. 

    So in closing, we'd all better get used to communicating with AI? We'd all better watch our P's and Q's around AI? We better teach AI how to understand us better and appeal to our better nature? Well, one of those require humans to be better in touch with their own nature. The other two define us in terms of something man-made like a tool.

    I heard a quote from Henry Ford that went "If I had listened to what the consumer wanted, I would have bred faster horses." I've heard mostly the opposite sentiment in discussions surrounding User Centered UX design. But like most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. If AL really gets me, he'll start showing me cars and not a bunch of horses (and then make money telling the people selling the saddles how I negotiate).