Prof Marek Kowalkiewicz, a Brisbane-based lecturer in AI has released a book The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions. Photograph: Dan Peled/The Guardian
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup In fact, he will contend later that evening – striding before an audience of about 100 at his book launch at the Queensland AI Hub in the nightclub district of Fortitude Valley, dressed in trademark “minion yellow” Nikes, jeans, fitted tee and blazer – rather than fear the economy of algorithms, savvy businesses and individuals are now able to conjure “superhuman” serfs to their bidding.eside a weed-choked gully at the boundary of Kowalkiewicz’s Anstead acreage crouches a squat creature.
Other far more sinister real world effects of algorithms are well documented. In the US, pedestrians have been mowed down by robotaxis; prisoners denied bail on the advice, in part, of software; in Australia, welfare recipients incorrectly and illegally hounded by an algorithmic debt collector that.