Rather than discovering something new, everyone just watches The Office and Parks and Rec., again and again. Now those theme songs make my skin fucking crawl.
This is a consequence of the metrics that are being optimized, it's not a fault of the algorithm per se.
The rare occasions I discover a new channel, it’s almost always from some source other than the algorithm: a referral from a friend, this site, another YouTuber, etc. My viewership of the same repetitive roster of videos absolutely tails off until I find something new from elsewhere.
For example, in months of being subscribed to my mechanics [0] (who does incredibly engrossing and relaxing restorations of mechanical stuff), not once was I suggested a video from Baumgartner Restoration [1], an art conservator who produces videos with a similar attention to detail and high production value.
Thematically this should be an easy recommendation for YouTube to make, but evidently the content is just different enough that it scores as a false-negative. After finding the latter channel independently, my viewing time absolutely rose for a while.
In theory, YouTube ought to be able to detect and learn from this signal of non-algorithmic discovery of new content. Yet, here we are.
I suspect there is something similar going on with video/music recommendations. When a bad novel suggestion is made the penalty is likely too high to overcome (User immediately clicks off) with traditional reinforcement methods.
The application of ML and data science in this industry is quite hilariously bad, really.
Probably. But pretty much anything they recommend is junk, so... That's where the author may have a point. If you don't understand your AI algorithm anymore, it's hard to improve it or even realize how wrong it is. AI is generally good at steering the masses into a couple of "averaged" directions. At the individual level though, it's often crap, unless you are the perfect stereotype that the algorithms assumes you to be.
Sure, YouTube itself proably built insane stuff in their engine you could never replicate with classic methods (ignoring whether the YT algo is any good).
However, if we are just talking about the Vlog of your real estate company, you should probably A/B-test whether your viewers prefer order by time or clicks and implement a decent title search bar. And kick the consultant hyping you up about ML out, now.
So my takeaway is that is not about whether AI is never useful or about 2D steering, but about using the right tool for the right job.
And building on that, I have to give the author probs to demonstrating an alternative solution to I problem wich I would have definitely solved via AI.