Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

‘I don’t like the look of your book,’ my housemate says. ‘I think reading it will scare me.’

I can understand why. Even just reading the blurb of Hello World serves as a reminder of just of how much of our daily experiences are already and increasingly will be influenced by algorithms, a fact that sits uneasily with most people. A lot of what we hear about machine learning in the media focuses on its potential to manipulate us. Recent news reports of intrusive political campaign tactics, for example, have seen algorithms discussed in the same breath as conspiracy theories. And there’s a sense of helplessness in much of the coverage implying the inevitable take-over of corrupt corporate giants, or worse – cold, inhuman AIs.

In this book, however, mathematician Hannah Fry takes a step back, encouraging the reader to remember that algorithms don’t claim to be all-knowing, they just provide their best guess to the problems we’ve set them.