Algorithms and the coronavirus pandemic

Analysing the growing backlash over governments’ use of automated decision-making tools. COVID-19 forced schools in the UK to cancel exams in 2020, and Ofqual — the government department in charge of examinations — to create an algorithm that determines students' grades based on "standardising teachers’ assessed grades." The results were not well received, posing questions on the fairness of processes like this and what we should expect in the future, as our lives become more and more interdependent on algorithms. Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan explores in the Financial Times.