There came a point, not so long ago, when I realized that my Netflix algorithm had become a Black Mirror of a different kind, reflecting the very worst parts of my persona. Sure, I went through a ...

I removed YouTube’s recommendations, Shorts, and other distractions, and it suddenly felt less like a feed and more like a ...

I was halfway through a master’s in Computer Science when my vision changed. I was working as a data scientist during my summer off from school, and I had friends who said things like “I’m at a local ...

The tree of life was dying, and we had run out of ideas on how to save it. We had tried everything we could think of and were hopelessly stuck when a voice chirped through a walkie-talkie, informing ...

Some definitions suggest that manipulation treats people as “tools or fools.” My preferred definition sees manipulation as an ...

Spotify's 600 million users are facing one of the streaming service’s most anticipated, yet dreaded, events: Spotify Wrapped. The annual user listening report provides each Spotify user with a ...

The changing use of the word algorithm reflects this enhanced visibility. In fact, the meaning of this word has changed ...

I listen to a lot of music. In December when Spotify put out its handy tool for measuring how much music you listened to in 2015, I clocked in at 110,000 minutes. By Rent calculations, that’s over a ...

Is my car hallucinating? Is the algorithm that runs the police surveillance system in my city paranoid? Marvin the android in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had a pain in all the ...