A Chat With My Algorithm

A Chat With My Algorithm

W. BRUCE CAMERON

I pay an online company $ 9.99 a month to send me DVDs that I then lose and have to shell out 14 bucks to replace. It would probably be less expensive if I just shot the movies myself. I lose the discs because I set them aside to watch during my “free time,” and then they get buried in the piles of mail I’m supposed to be handling during my “work time.”

Part of the service is a recommendations algorithm (RA) that assesses what movies I’ve enjoyed losing in the past and suggests movies for me to lose in the future. Just once I’d like to talk to my RA to...