Why it's dangerous to outsource our critical thinking to computers

It is crucial for a resilient democracy that we better understand how Google and Facebook are changing the way we think, interact and behave

The lack of transparency around the processes of Google's search engine has been a preoccupation among scholars since the company began. Long before Google expanded into self-driving cars, smartphones and ubiquitous email, the company was being asked to explain the principles and ideologies that determine how it presents information to us. And now, 10 years later, the impact of reckless, subjective and inflammatory misinformation served up on the web is being felt like never before in the digital era.

Google responded to negative coverage this week by reluctantly acknowledging and then removing offensive autosuggest results for certain search results. Type "jews are" into Google, for example, and until now the site would autofill "jews are evil" before recommending links to several rightwing antisemitic hate sites.