You have to teach your algorithm what it can do and what it cannot do because, otherwise, there is a risk that the algorithms will learn the tricks of the old cartels.
I don't follow anybody. I just flip through whatever Instagram sends me. I like to keep my algorithm pure, so I only ever like pictures of art. It's a rabbit hole for me because I'm a total voyeur.
I took a computer-science course to fill a prerequisite at Stanford, and I realized that every day was a new problem, and every day you got to think about how to solve something new, how to reason through something new, how to develop an algorithm to solve for something you hadn't worked on before.
In comparison, Google is brilliant because it uses an algorithm that ranks Web pages by the number of links to them, with those links themselves valued by the number of links to their page of origin.
When I was working on my Ph.D., I developed a computer algorithm to look for rapid changes in populations' DNA. Our DNA changes constantly over generations, but if certain changes spread through a population more quickly than others, they are probably the beneficial results of natural selection. This is the protection we give ourselves to survive.
If an acquisition can speed a process or fill a gap, we'll jump right to that. It's about timing, need... it's not necessarily an algorithm.
The problem with digital architecture is that an algorithm can produce endless variations, so an architect has many choices.
There are a lot of people, who want to be writers, who stumble at a blank page. You could imagine an algorithm that could give writers a first draft or a starter kit, so it could enable people to be more prolific in their writing.
I suppose I sort of like effects that have some organic elements rather than ones that are entirely generated by a computer. Just because, no matter how complex the algorithm is, it's still an algorithm.
I have a real problem now when I go onto Netflix: it takes me a half hour to pick something out. They've got to figure something out, whether it's their algorithm... Maybe if they had it curated like a video store: 'Will Ferrell recommends this movie' or 'Jennifer Lawrence recommends these 10 movies.'
