Review:
This looks at all the different areas of our lives in which algorithms are used and talks about the benefits and drawbacks of that. This was originally published in 2018, several years before ChatGPT was released, and I couldn't help but wonder what the author might say today.
Even being almost a decade behind the times, this book was a nice reminder of the many areas of our lives in which algorithms play a part - there were several real-world examples mentioned that were completely new to me. Fry tried to keep a very balanced look at everything, emphasizing that blindly trusting algorithms wasn't a good idea, but also underscoring the benefits of using algorithms vs. not.
It's a nice, accessible read overall. That said, after reading Karen Hao's Empire of AI, Fry's book feels a bit too optimistic.
