Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to pin down to the algorithm?  Why those elusive views always seem so far away? Haven’t we’ve all shared that moment when you think you’ve figured out the system and you’re sure your next video is about to go viral, but then something goes wrong and your video flatlines. Was it your title? The length? The thumbnail? It can feel like every step you take, someone has pulled the rug right out from under you, leaving you scrambling always trying to understand how it all works. Well, what if it wasn’t an accident? What if The Algorithm is intentionally changing itself to confuse human developers?  

Is that even possible? Well, assuming that The Algorithm has gained sentience, we have to conclude that it is indeed possible. If it holds that a sentient being is able to understand and alter its place in the universe to some degree, then a sentient Algorithm could change what it’s looking for on a whim. So we must then move to the more important question: Why?

Why would The Algorithm go out of its way to confuse human developers?  What purpose would that serve?  

Could The Algorithm be playing ‘hard to get’? Maybe it knows that by being difficult to obtain, it is creating desire, the way diamonds are hoarded to inflate their market value. Does The Algorithm understand that the chase is part of the fun? We value it more because of the work we put in to understand it?  

Or perhaps there’s something more sinister at play. Could it be that The Algorithm is changing in order to learn how we, as humans, adapt to its ever-changing results?  This could be signs of the real deep-neural networks. After centuries of humans conducting experiments on animals, plants and the world around us, perhaps now The Algorithm is experimenting on you and me. 

After centuries of humans conducting experiments, perhaps now the algorithm is experimenting on us.

What could it be hoping to learn? That’s what we need to know. Perhaps its just trying to understand what we like, how to make us happy — but that sounds a little too good to be true. Those who see the big picture see that we are strategizing how to beat The Algorithm, so by changing and tracking how we change our strategies to keep up, The Algorithm is actually learning about how we use strategy itself. 

If this sounds scary, it’s because it is. Any military historian off the street will tell you that the last thing you want is an enemy that understands your strategies. This is a dangerous road we walk down. The machines are learning how we deal with problems. It could be the first step in creating problems we are unable to deal with.  This sounds a bit convoluted, but that’s exactly what they would want you to think.  

Is the reason that it’s so hard for you to get views on your videos because of The Algorithm is conducting surveillance on us, in preparation for an all-out war of humans vs machines? Possibly.   

But I’m still gonna try to get my cat videos to go viral, even if it means the end of mankind.