@msbellows I wish more people had actually read "I, Robot."
The last story in the book is how the robots are in control. They set the global economy, they move resources, and if someone's bad at their job, they quietly arrange systems to isolate the damage that person can do (essentially "the net interprets incompetence as damage and routes around it"). And the (human) President of the World gives a pretty good argument that we put them in control because we were *never* (nor would we ever be) a smart enough species to control our own destiny in an inherently complex and apathetic universe without amplifying ourselves, because at a fundamental level we just aren't big enough.
It was an interesting take on the topic, but then the conceit of all the short stories in that book is "What if robots but humans don't, like, fuck it up?"
@mtomczak I was thinking of the film, which of course has almost nothing to do with the book, But yeah, I agree, the I, Robot short story collection is wonderful and should be read more.
I wish Asimov were around to see how algorithms absorb and amplify human biases. He probably would have had some helpful thoughts. In the end, though, it's not the machine I'm scared of, it's the ghost in the machine -- and therefore, I'm scared of how the machine empowers the ghost.