“Serendipity fades with everything we hand over to algorithms. Most of these algorithms are noiseless. They gently guide us in our choices. But we don’t know why we are being guided in certain directions or how these algorithms work. And because they constitute the value of a company’s intellectual property, there is an incentive to keep them opaque to us.”

“Serendipity fades with everything we hand over to algorithms. Most of these algorithms are noiseless. They gently guide us in our choices. But we don’t know why we are being guided in certain directions or how these algorithms work. And because they constitute the value of a company’s intellectual property, there is an incentive to keep them opaque to us.”

— Alec J. Ross