Interesting idea and deserves a closer look.
Elon’s Twitter and Open Source Algorithm
Bringing transparency to social media algorithms is as important to the future of humanity (Elon’s stated life mission) as free speech, if not more. In fact, algorithmic transparency builds the trust necessary to strengthen free speech. The idea of open sourcing algorithms is not new. Many people have been advocating it for years. I’ve done the same in this newsletter regarding both TikTok and Facebook.
While this may sound “anti-business”, the author has the following argument:
The algorithms are the “rules of the road” that govern all the routes. They are most likely built from existing AI frameworks, most of which are already open sourced (e.g. Tensorflow, PyTorch, Keras, etc.). Most of the mathematical equations that underpin these frameworks are published in academic journals, open to anyone who can understand them to implement, verify, and backtest. Twitter’s algorithms are likely built from or heavily leverages these free, open components. No one builds algorithms from scratch behind closed doors anymore thanks to the popularity of open source technologies. So there is nothing valuable about keeping the algorithm a “secret”.
I am not sure if this would be achieved in the immediate term, given the chaos at Twitter, currently. (All my posts are scheduled for the future; I am writing this in the first week of November).
I plan to have a closer scrutiny of this issue. Algorithms will determine the future course of healthcare. Twitter’s business decision (or lack thereof) will determine a specific business case scenarios and how it lifts up from current stagnation in revenues.
RadOncNotes 