When Google Flu Trends was launched in 2009, Google's chief economist, Hal Varian, explained that search trends could be used to "predict the present." At the time, the notion that useful patterns and insights could be extracted from large-scale search query data made perfect sense. After all, many users' digital journeys begin with a search query -- including 8 out of 10 people seeking health-related information. So what could possibly go wrong? The answer is infamous in the business and data science communities.

When Google Flu Trends was launched in 2009, Google's chief economist, Hal Varian, explained that search trends could be used to "predict the present." At the time, the notion that useful patterns and insights could be extracted from large-scale search query data made perfect sense. After all, many users' digital journeys begin with a search query -- including 8 out of 10 people seeking health-related information. So what could possibly go wrong? The answer is infamous in the business and data science communities.

Is the algorithm that runs the police surveillance system in my city paranoid? Marvin the android in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had a pain in all the diodes down his left-hand side. Is that how my toaster feels? This all sounds ludicrous until we realize that our algorithms are increasingly being made in our own image. As we've learned more about our own brains, we've enlisted that knowledge to create algorithmic versions of ourselves.