Why we mustn't be slaves to the algorithm

The tech craze du jour is machine learning (ML). Billions of dollars of venture capital are being poured into it. All the big tech companies are deep into it. Every computer science student doing a PhD on it is assured of lucrative employment after graduation at his or her pick of technology companies. One of the most popular courses at Stanford is CS229: Machine Learning. ML is the magic sauce that enables Amazon to know what you might want to buy next, and Netflix to guess which films might interest you, given your recent viewing history.