A joke written on Twitter by a Google engineer named Chet Haase in 2017 pinpoints the problem: “A machine learning algorithm walks into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘What’ll you have?’ The algorithm says, ‘What’s everyone else having?’ ” The punch line is that in algorithmic culture, the right choice is always what the majority of other people have already chosen. But even if everyone else was, maybe you’re just not in the mood for a whiskey sour.
