More and more of modern life is steered by algorithms. But what are they exactly, and who is behind them?
There are many reasons to believe that film stars earn too much. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie once hired an entire train to travel from London to Glasgow. Tom Cruise’s daughter Suri is reputed to have a wardrobe worth $400,000. Nicolas Cage once paid $276,000 for a dinosaur head. He would have got it for less, but he was bidding against Leonardo DiCaprio.
Nick Meaney has a better reason for believing that the stars are overpaid: his algorithm tells him so. In fact, he says, with all but one of the above actors, the studios are almost certainly wasting their money. Because, according to his movie-analysis software, there are only three actors who make money for a film. And there is at least one A-list actress who is worth paying not to star in your next picture.
Taken together, all this is a revolution. The production line standardised industry. We became a species that could have any colour Model T Ford as long as it was black. Later, the range of colours increased, but never to match the number of customers. Today, the chances are that the recommendations Amazon gives you will match no one else’s in the world.
Taken together, all this is a revolution. The production line standardised industry. We became a species that could have any colour Model T Ford as long as it was black. Later, the range of colours increased, but never to match the number of customers. Today, the chances are that the recommendations Amazon gives you will match no one else’s in the world.
Soon internet-shopping technology will come to the high street. Several companies are now producing software that can use facial recognition to change the advertising you see on the street. Early systems just spot if you are male or female and react accordingly. The hope—from the advertisers’ point of view, at least—is to correlate the facial recognition with Facebook, to produce a truly personalised advert.
