Out of Control

In our age of big data, algorithms are in control—of traders on Wall Street, pilots in the cockpit, doctors at the hospital, and soldiers on the battlefield. Increasingly, these systems run themselves. We no longer need people to fly planes or perform surgeries; we don’t even need them to write the news. What happens when machines become better at communicating with one another than humans are? Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.