It shouldn’t be surprising. Engineers routinely talk about how it would be great if we removed the human element and replaced it with algorithmic decision making. But see how sentencing algorithms give longer prison terms to black people. Yes, the technical explanation is that it’s just reflecting society’s racism. But the point is that, contrary to the bill of sale, using algorithms doesn’t actually remove the human element. Indeed, there is a good argument (as the author of this piece makes elsewhere) that it ossifies the human biases that exist at one moment in time.