As AI Meets the Reputation Economy, We're All Being Silently Judged

In the Black Mirror episode Nosedive, the protagonist, Lacie, lives in a saccharine world of pleasantries in which every personal or business interaction is scored. Everything depends on the social score, and everyone is desperate to move up in the rankings. But the omnipresent rating game has one big catch: ranking up is incredibly hard, while ranking down is rapid and easy, like a free-fall. Welcome to the reputation economy, where the individual social graph -- the social data set about each person -- determines one's value in society, access to services, and employability. In this economy, reputation becomes currency.