Synopses & Reviews
The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What happens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.
Review
“Algorithms are affecting every field of human endeavor, from markets to medicine, poker to pop music. Read this book if you want to understand the most powerful force shaping the world today and tomorrow.”
—Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist, MIT; coauthor of Race Against the Machine “Christopher Steiner knows how to find terrific stories and tell them well. He has written a lively narrative with humans at its center. To be sure, its subject is important, but the book is also fun.”
—Randall Stross, author of Planet Google and The Launch Pad
Review
“[Steiner] excels in bringing a dry subject to life.”
—Financial Times
"As readers follow Steiner in his whirlwind tour of algorithm applications, they will marvel at the versatility of a mathematical tool understood only by a small circle of experts. Readers peer over the experts shoulders long enough to trace the decision-tree logic of an individual algorithm and to follow the cascading dynamics of the linked algorithms that drive the “bots” now handling everything from putting astronauts into space to matching compatible personalities venturing into the dating scene…. An accessible foray into computer programming that has become a hidden but pervasive presence." —Bryce Christensen, Booklist
“Algorithms are affecting every field of human endeavor, from markets to medicine, poker to pop music. Read this book if you want to understand the most powerful force shaping the world today and tomorrow.”
—Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist, MIT; coauthor of Race Against the Machine “Christopher Steiner knows how to find terrific stories and tell them well. He has written a lively narrative with humans at its center. To be sure, its subject is important, but the book is also fun.”
—Randall Stross, author of Planet Google and The Launch Pad
Review
“The clash between humanists and technologists, between brain power and machine power, is an ancient battle. In his lucidly written account of how this clash has played out in past years and how it will unfold in the future, Luke Dormehl is a tour guide with the breadth of a scholar, the sagacity of a judge, and the clear eye of a good journalist. This important book deserves to be read, and digested, by all who wrestle with, and enjoy -- or worry about -- a world transformed by digital technology.”
—Ken Auletta, author of Googled
“This information-rich narrative is fascinating for experts and laymen alike. A great resource for anyone seeking to understand the intersection of technology and humanity in the 21st century.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is exactly the type of book we need to be reading as society considers the computerized control of nearly all the systems that affect our lives.”
—Chris Dannen, Fast Company
“A perfect combination of journalism and scholarship ... An essential text for understanding the shimmering boundary between human beings and the machines they create.”
—Stephen Ramsay, author of Reading Machines
Synopsis
From money to sports to medicine to music, this is the age of the algorithm. The 2010 “flash crash” exposed our financial institutions’ reliance on “trading bots” programmed by physicists and engineers. CIA analysts are being usurped by software that predicts what foreign leaders will do. Baseball general managers now trust their computers more than their gut instincts. Christopher Steiner traces the story of how algorithms (and their programmers) have spread from Wall Street to Main Street, altering every aspect of our lives. Sooner than we think, our schools, shopping choices, blind dates, and more will be governed by cleverly designed bots rather than human experience and intuition. Algorithms are already writing hit songs and selecting job candidates. In many cases these innovations are beneficial, such as bots that can interpret X-rays with greater accuracy than radiologists. But there will inevitably be troubling side effects, like the destruction of many professions and increased volatility in financial markets. Drawing on extensive research and investigative reporting, Steiner explores what our world will look like when computers make more and more decisions for us.
Synopsis
How the rise of computerized decision-making affects every aspect of business and daily life
The bot takeover began with high frequency trading on Wall Street, and from there it spread to all manners of high-level taskssuch as diagnosing illnesses or interpreting legal documents. There is no realm of human endeavor safe from algorithms that employ speed, precision and nuance.
In this fascinating book, Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over and shows why the bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives. We meet bots that are driving cars, penning haikus, and writing music mistaken for Bachs. They listen in on customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. On Wall Street, pre-programmed algorithmic deals are executed by machines faster than any human couldleaving human investors at a severe disadvantage.
But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, and our national security? Is a stock market controlled by high-speed trading bots worth investing in? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others?
Synopsis
A fascinating guided tour of the complex, fast-moving, and influential world of algorithmswhat they are, why theyre such powerful predictors of human behavior, and where theyre headed next.
Algorithms exert an extraordinary level of influence on our everyday lives - from dating websites and financial trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches - Google's search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola. Algorithms follow a series of instructions to solve a problem and will include a strategy to produce the best outcome possible from the options and permutations available. Used by scientists for many years and applied in a very specialized way they are now increasingly employed to process the vast amounts of data being generated, in investment banks, in the movie industry where they are used to predict success or failure at the box office and by social scientists and policy makers.
What if everything in life could be reduced to a simple formula? What if numbers were able to tell us which partners we were best matched with not just in terms of attractiveness, but for a long-term committed marriage? Or if they could say which films would be the biggest hits at the box office, and what changes could be made to those films to make them even more successful? Or even who is likely to commit certain crimes, and when? This may sound like the world of science fiction, but in fact it is just the tip of the iceberg in a world that is increasingly ruled by complex algorithms and neural networks.
In The Formula, Luke Dormehl takes readers inside the world of numbers, asking how we came to believe in the all-conquering power of algorithms; introducing the mathematicians, artificial intelligence experts and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are shaping this brave new world, and ultimately asking how we survive in an era where numbers can sometimes seem to create as many problems as they solve.
Synopsis
How the rise of computerized decision-making affects every aspect of business and daily life
These days, high-level taskssuch as diagnosing an illness or interpreting legal documentsare increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work with speed and nuance.
In this fascinating book, Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over and shows why the bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives. We meet bots that are driving cars, penning haikus, and writing music mistaken for Bachs. They listen in on customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff.
But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, and our national security? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others?
About the Author
Chris Steiner is the author of
$20 Per Gallon, a
New York Times bestseller. His writing has appeared in
Forbes, the
Chicago Tribune, the
Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and more. He holds an engineering degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a masters in journalism from Northwestern University. Steiner lives in Evanston, Illinois, with his family.