2019年9月5日 星期四

Tricky Clicks: ‘Dark Patterns’ Flood the Web 電商網站 「黑暗模式」充斥


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2019/09/06 第278期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
紐時周報精選 Tricky Clicks: 'Dark Patterns' Flood the Web 電商網站 「黑暗模式」充斥
Artificial Intelligence Takes Over the Boss's Role 取代上司角色 改由AI扮演
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Tricky Clicks: 'Dark Patterns' Flood the Web 電商網站 「黑暗模式」充斥
文/Jennifer Valentino-DeVries
譯/陳韋廷

電商網站 黑暗模式充斥

When potential customers visit the online resale store ThredUp, messages on the screen regularly tell them just how much other users of the site are saving.

潛在客戶造訪線上二手商店ThredUp時,螢幕上訊息會不斷告訴他們,網站其他用戶省下了多少錢。

"Alexandra from Anaheim just saved $222 on her order" says one message next to an image of a bright, multicolored dress. It's a common technique on shopping websites, intended to capitalize on people's desire to fit in with others and to create a "fear of missing out."

一張亮色系彩色洋裝圖片旁訊息寫著:「安納罕的亞歷山德拉剛才下訂時省下了222美元。」這是購物網站上一種常見伎倆,目的是利用人們想和他人融為一體的願望,並製造「害怕錯過機會」的恐懼。

But "Alexandra from Anaheim" did not buy the dress. She does not exist. Instead, the website's code pulled combinations from a preprogrammed list of names, locations and items and presented them as actual recent purchases.

可是「安納罕的亞歷山德拉」沒有買衣服,她並不存在。實情是,網站的程式從預先列好的諸多名字、地點及品項湊出一些組合,當成新近真正的購買行為呈現出來。

The fake messages are an example of "dark patterns," devious online techniques that manipulate users into doing things they might not otherwise choose to.

這類假訊息是「黑暗模式」的一個例子,黑暗模式是種狡猾的線上伎倆,操縱用戶去做原本可能不會做的事。

Sometimes, the methods are clearly deceptive, as with ThredUp, but often they walk a fine line between manipulation and persuasion: Think of the brightly colored button that encourages you to agree to a service, while the link to opt out is hidden in a drop-down menu.

這些方法有時顯屬欺騙,就像Thredup的例子,但通常游走於不易區隔的操縱和說服二者之間:請想想是不是這樣:鼓勵接受服務的按鈕顏色鮮艷亮眼,選擇退出的連結卻藏在下拉式選單中。

Web designers and consumers have been highlighting examples of dark patterns online since Harry Brignull, a user-experience consultant in Britain, coined the term in 2010. But interest in the tools of online influence has intensified in the past year, amid a series of high-profile revelations about Silicon Valley companies' handling of people's private information. An important element of that discussion is the notion of consent: what users are agreeing to do and share online, and how far businesses can go in leading them to make decisions.

打從英國用戶體驗諮詢師哈利·布里格納爾2010年發明黑暗模式一詞以來,網絡設計師與消費者一直大力揪出網路黑暗模式的例子,但在矽谷公司對個人隱私資訊處理方式遭一連串高調曝光之際,過去一年人們對網路影響力工具的興趣也有所增強。相關討論的一個重點是同意的概念:用戶同意在網路上做和分享的是什麼,以及企業引導他們做決定能做到什麼程度。

The prevalence of dark patterns across the web is unknown, but in a study released last month, researchers from Princeton University have started to quantify the phenomenon, focusing first on retail companies. The study is the first to systematically examine a large number of sites. The researchers developed software that automatically scanned more than 10,000 sites and found that more than 1,200 of them used techniques that the authors identified as dark patterns, including ThredUp's fake notifications.

目前尚不清楚網路上黑暗模式有多盛行,但在上個月發表的一項研究報告中,普林斯頓大學研究人員已將這種現象開始量化,最先關注的則是零售公司。這是第一個檢查大量網站的系統性研究。研究人員開發了自動掃描1萬多個網站的軟體,發現超過1200個網站使用了報告作者認定為黑暗模式的伎倆,包括ThredUp的假訊息通知。

The report coincides with discussions among lawmakers about regulating technology companies, including through a bill proposed in April by Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Mark Warner, D-Va., that is meant to limit the use of dark patterns by making some of the techniques illegal and giving the Federal Trade Commission more authority to police the practice.

這份報告發表之際,國會議員正在討論如何監理科技公司,包括透過內布拉斯加州共和黨聯邦參議員費雪、維吉尼亞州民主黨聯邦參議員華納4月提出的一項法案。該法案旨在限制黑暗模式的使用,方法則為立法禁止部分伎倆,並賦予聯邦貿易委員會更大檢肅權。

 
Artificial Intelligence Takes Over the Boss's Role 取代上司角色 改由AI扮演
文/Kevin Roose
譯/陳韋廷

上司角色 改由AI扮演

When Conor Sprouls, a customer service representative in the call center of insurance giant MetLife talks to a customer over the phone, he keeps one eye on the bottom-right corner of his screen. There, in a little blue box, A.I. tells him how he's doing.

康納·史普爾斯是保險業巨擘大都會人壽電話客服中心的客戶服務代表,當他透過電話跟客戶談話時,一隻眼緊盯電腦屏幕右下角一個藍色方塊,人工智慧會告知他表現如何。

Talking too fast? The program flashes an icon of a speedometer, indicating that he should slow down.

講話太快?程式會跳出一個速度表的圖示,告訴他該放慢速度。

Sound sleepy? The software displays an "energy cue," with a picture of a coffee cup. Not empathetic enough? A heart icon pops up.

聲音顯得睏倦?軟體會以一個咖啡杯的圖案作為"能量提示"。不夠有同理心?愛心圖案就會跳出。

For decades, people have fearfully imagined armies of hyper-efficient robots invading offices and factories, gobbling up jobs once done by humans. But in all of the worry about the potential of artificial intelligence to replace rank-and-file workers, we may have overlooked the possibility it will replace the bosses, too.

數十年來,人們一直害怕地想像著高效率機器人入侵辦公室與工廠,把原屬人類的工作大舉搶去,然而在有關人工智慧可能取代基層人員的種種憂慮中,我們可能忽略了它也會取代上司的可能性。

Sprouls and the other call center workers at his office in Warwick, Rhode Island, still have plenty of human supervisors. But the software on their screens — made by Cogito, an A.I. company in Boston — has become a kind of adjunct manager, always watching them. At the end of every call, Sprouls' Cogito notifications are tallied and added to a statistics dashboard that his supervisor can view. If he hides the Cogito window by minimizing it, the program notifies his supervisor.

史普爾斯跟羅德島沃維克市客服中心辦公室內其他同事的工作,目前仍有不少上級主管在監督,但他們螢幕上由波士頓人工智慧公司Cogito製作的軟體,已成為兼職管理人員,不斷監督著他們。每次通話結束時,史普爾斯的Cogito通知就會被統計,並加到他主管可查看的統計板中。若他透過最小化方式將Cogito視窗隱藏,該程式會通知他的主管。

Cogito is one of several A.I. programs used in call centers and other workplaces. The goal, according to Joshua Feast, Cogito's chief executive, is to make workers more effective by giving them real-time feedback.

Cogito是數個用於客服中心及其他工作場所的人工智慧程式之一。Cogito執行長約書亞.菲斯特指出,目的是透過即時反饋來提高員工的效率。

"There is variability in human performance," Feast said. "We can infer from the way people are speaking with each other whether things are going well or not."

菲斯特說:「人的表現是具有變化性的。我們可從人們相互交談的方式來推斷事情是否進展順利。」

The goal of automation has always been efficiency, but in this new kind of workplace, A.I. sees humanity itself as the thing to be optimized. Amazon uses complex algorithms to track worker productivity in its fulfillment centers, and can automatically generate the paperwork to fire workers who don't meet their targets, as The Verge uncovered this year.

效率一直是自動化的目標,但在這種新型工作場所中,人工智慧把人性本身看作是需要優化的事物。一如The Verge今年所揭露的,亞馬遜使用複雜演算法追蹤履行中心員工的生產力,且可自動製成文件用以開除未達目標的員工。

(Amazon has disputed that it fires workers without human input, saying that managers can intervene in the process.) IBM has used Watson, its A.I. platform, during employee reviews to predict future performance and claims it has a 96% accuracy rate.

(亞馬遜一直辯稱不會在沒有真人介入的情況下開除員工,表示管理人員可在過程中進行干預。)IBM曾在員工評估期間使用旗下人工智慧平台Watson預測未來績效,並聲稱有96%準確率。

Then there are the startups. Cogito, which works with large insurance companies like MetLife and Humana as well as financial and retail firms, says it has 20,000 users. Percolata, a Silicon Valley company that counts Uniqlo and 7-Eleven among its clients, uses in-store sensors to calculate a "true productivity" score for each worker, and rank workers from most to least productive.

其次是新創公司。跟大都會人壽、Humana等大型保險公司及金融和零售業者合作的Cogito表示,該公司有2萬個用戶。客戶包括優衣庫和7-Eleven的矽谷公司Percolata,使用店內感應器來計算每個員工的「真實生產力」分數,並將員工依生產力從最高到最低加以排列。

說文解字看新聞

AI時代來臨,除可能取代一般勞工還能扮演管理階層,挾高效率之姿掀起職場存亡戰,而rank-and-file指「一般的、基層的」,文中當形容詞用,該複合字還能單獨當名詞使用,意指「一般大眾、普通士兵」。另外,同段片語gobble up意為「狼吞虎嚥或大量耗掉」,文中指「大舉奪去」。

supervisor指上級督導或主管,動詞為supervise。而相對於主管的就是部屬,英文是subordinate,又值得注意的是,adjunct在文中指的是「兼任的」意思,亦即並非原本的,正式的,而是「附加的、附屬的」。adjunct professor是兼任教授。

文中出現的The Verge是美國一個科技新聞及媒體網站,成立於2011年,發布新聞、長篇專題報導、產品評價、部落格,以及娛樂節目。由Vox媒體在紐約曼哈坦的辦事處操作。

 
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