Increasingly, computers are deciding what news stories we read, and may even end up teaching our children to speak. But whether we should allow them to is becoming the subject of a heated debate related to the use of algorithms.

Algorithms are pieces of code that, much like a recipe, provide a set of instructions to complete a task. They are used by companies like Google and Facebook to determine what search results are relevant and what posts are shown in someone’s timeline. They are used to mediate social, political, personal and commercial interactions for billions of people and can act as powerful gatekeepers that are increasingly used to make decisions for us or about us.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here