'I welcome our digital minions': the Silicon Valley insider warning about algorithms – while embracing them

Houses hide behind patches of subtropical rainforest in Brisbane's western outskirts; horses graze paddocks and road signs warn of deer and kangaroos. Nestled between a bend in the river and the foothills of the D'Aguilar Range, the suburb of Anstead may appear unsuitable habitat for a Polish-born business professor who believes that we must embrace the age of artificial intelligence. Yet not all is as it seems in Marek Kowalkiewicz's home among the gum trees. "When I moved here from Silicon Valley my kids were about five years old and had no idea what an iPad was," he says from the veranda overlooking his acreage. "There's the technology-infused world I'm in 9pm to 5pm and then there is this slightly – on the surface – less technology-infused world." It is the first Monday of March and Kowalkiewicz is hours from launching The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions.