Virtual or virtuous ants? Towards an ethic for the access

Abstract

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a collaborative information retrieval technique, belonging to the wider area of AI (more specifically, swarm intelligence). ACO aims at improving search engines’ performances by exploiting users’ behavior. Bookmarks, comments and tagging (i.e. ‘like’) are processed in an algorithm which makes the search engine work in order to recommend the ‘best way’ to users with similar information needs. Postings and comments are the ‘pherormones’ left by previous users throughout information hunting. However, the metaphor of ant colonies foraging for food stimulates further questions. In fact, the optimization of information seeking could reveal a controlling attitude, urging everybody to seek for the same target, minimizing individual choice, freedom and awareness. Consequently, using ACO could be risky for accessing OPAC or digital libraries. Could ‘ants’ be easily exploited by a single-minded ideological thinking or by a market-oriented society? Indeed that was what Norbert Wiener predicted in far-off 1950.