The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

Senior and student discounts don’t tend to be controversial, but mortgage concessions that favor males over females, “pink taxes” on women’s personal care items and dating apps that charge older users ...

Digital quantification determines Americans’ quality of life. Algorithms select job applicants for interviews and employees for performance bonuses. They aggregate stories and products as we shop for ...

The library sorting problem is used across computer science for organizing far more than just books. A new solution is less than a page-width away from the theoretical ideal. Computer scientists often ...

Deepfakes – essentially putting words in someone else’s mouth in a very believable way – are becoming more sophisticated by the day and increasingly hard to spot. Recent examples of deepfakes include ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you’ve been making the same commute for a long time, you’ve probably settled on what seems like the best route. But “best” is a ...

The algorithms that most social media platforms like Facebook, X, and TikTok use today might be contributing to political conflict and polarization. But a new study from the University of Copenhagen ...

Three new books warn against turning into the person the algorithm thinks you are. Like a lot of Netflix subscribers, I find that my personal feed tends to be hit or miss. Usually more miss. The ...

Many companies are searching for tools to help them hire diverse, productive workforces. Even if diversity is not the main hiring goal, they may want to ensure they’re not overlooking talented ...