Google once believed it could use algorithms to track pandemics. People with flu would search for flu-related information, it reasoned, giving the tech giant instant knowledge of the disease’s prevalence. Google Flu Trends (GFT) would merge this information with flu tracking data to create algorithms that could predict the disease’s trajectory weeks before governments’ own estimates.
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Gerd Gigerenzer’s How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms is published on 3 March.
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