In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man Is King: Knowledge Brokerage in the Age of Learning Algorithms

This paper presents research on how knowledge brokers attempt to translate opaque algorithmic predictions. The is based a 31-month ethnographic study of the implementation learning algorithm by Dutch police predict occurrence crime incidents and offers one first empirical accounts brokers. We studied group intelligence officers, who were tasked with brokering between machine community user translating outcomes management. found that, as brokers, they performed different translation practices over time enacted increasingly influential brokerage roles, namely, those messenger, interpreter, curator. Triggered an impassable boundary yielded black-boxed learning, eventually acted like “kings in land blind” substituted predictions their own judgments. By emphasizing dynamic nature work, we contribute literature age algorithms.