The Algorithm

Hilke Schellmann

ISBN 10: 1805263080 / ISBN 13: 9781805263081

Published by C Hurst and Co Publishers Ltd, GB, 2025

About this Item

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2024 Artificial intelligence is being used, on a massive scale, to decide who gets hired, fired and promoted. Through whistleblower exclusives, leaked internal documents and astonishing real-world practices, journalist Hilke Schellmann reveals the secret rise of AI in the world of work. Testing them herself, she discovers that many algorithms making these high-stakes calculations do more harm than good, and traces their origins to troubling pseudoscientific ideas about people's 'true' essence.Interviewing experts, developers and ordinary workers, The Algorithm offers fascinating and alarming truths. From software analysing interviewees' facial expressions and tone of voice, to video games assessing their performance, to 'personality profiles' built from candidates' social media, almost all major employers use AI in recruitment. Programmes track their staff's activity, group dynamics and physical health, identifying who is productive, a bully, worth long-term investment, or likely to quit. But can we trust them?In a world of severe job insecurity, workplace algorithms are on the brink of dominating or even threatening us-if we don't fight back.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781805263081

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Algorithm
• Publisher: C Hurst and Co Publishers Ltd, GB
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1805263080
• ISBN 13: 9781805263081
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2024

Artificial intelligence is being used, on a massive scale, to decide who gets hired, fired and promoted. Through whistleblower exclusives, leaked internal documents and astonishing real-world practices, journalist Hilke Schellmann reveals the secret rise of AI in the world of work. Testing them herself, she discovers that many algorithms making these high-stakes calculations do more harm than good, and traces their origins to troubling pseudoscientific ideas about people’s ‘true’ essence.

Interviewing experts, developers and ordinary workers, The Algorithm offers fascinating and alarming truths. From software analysing interviewees’ facial expressions and tone of voice, to video games assessing their performance, to ‘personality profiles’ built from candidates’ social media, almost all major employers use AI in recruitment. Programmes track their staff’s activity, group dynamics and physical health, identifying who is productive, a bully, worth long-term investment, or likely to quit. But can we trust them?

In a world of severe job insecurity, workplace algorithms are on the brink of dominating or even threatening us―if we don’t fight back.