''Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World'' is a book written by Christopher Steiner and published by

Penguin Group Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initial ...

. Steiner begins his study of algorithms on Wall Street in the 1980s but also provides examples from other industries. For example, he explains the history of

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the "Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying indiv ...

and the use of algorithms in music identification. He expresses concern that such use of algorithms may lead to the homogenization of music over time. Steiner also discusses the algorithms that eLoyalty (now owned by

Mattersight Corporation Mattersight Corporation, formerly known as eLoyalty, is a publicly traded company that provides SaaS-based enterprise behavioral analytics software. Its software focuses on customer-employee interaction and behavior. The company is headquartered i ...

following divestiture of the technology) was created by dissecting 2 million speech patterns and can now identify a caller's personality style and direct the caller with a compatible customer support representative. Steiner's book shares both the warning and the opportunity that algorithms bring to just about every industry in the world, and the pros and cons of the societal impact of automation (e.g. impact on employment).

References

{{reflist 2012 non-fiction books Books about automation Algorithms Portfolio (publisher) books

See also

References