Already a subscriber?In mid-2020, Bonds, a well-known Australian fashion retailer, released a line of cotton face masks that had been treated with an antiviral finish. Back then, most people assumed wearing a cotton mask provided good protection against COVID-19, but masks were in short supply around the country. Unsurprisingly, they sold out in an instant. The company had to make a rush order of another 4 million to keep up with demand.
The algorithm I used to buy my face masks was simple. There are plenty of algorithms available on the internet that do such basic tasks completely free of charge – and if you like them, you can hire them for more complex, paid jobs in the future. More capable algorithmic agents can perform every single step of a transaction. The only things that slows them down are captchas – but more on those later.The algorithms that buy and sell products and invest money on our behalf deserve a name.
There are many ways digital minions can wreak havoc beyond disrupting the markets. We all have to be aware that things can go wrong, but I tend to be an optimist and prefer to consider opportunities and the positive impact algorithms can have.When I’m not busy thinking about algorithms, I love to go on trail runs. A couple of days before writing the first draft of this chapter, I went out for my usual run. It was a winter evening, and the forest was already dark.
This task was more urgent, and more important, than any others, including getting up. I managed to press the button within the grace period the watch had given me. Thank you for taking care of me, dear sports-watch algorithm, I thought, but I don’t need any assistance this time. Chavous had to convert the GPS location to a point on a map and then provide that location to the rescuers. Within 12 minutes of the watch asking for help, the rescue team located the owner in a shrubby area near his home. The dispatchers said the watch saved the man’s life.I am quite fond of these quiet heroes: algorithms that churn away doing useful work behind the scenes.
Of course, if a business can replicate its products or services efficiently and virtually without expense – that is, if additional units can be produced at near zero cost – it’s good for profits. The IT company HP recently introduced a new service in Australia, called HP Instant Ink. Now that more people work from home, office-printer usage has dropped. In June 2022, the chief executive of HP said it was expecting a 20 per cent decrease in office-based printing compared with its pre-pandemic estimates.