Mark Ritson: Machine learning may be the future but it’s still pretty dumb

Scott Galloway, the entirely fantastic NYU marketing professor who presents as if he has just imbibed a combination of uppers and downers all in one gulp, gives a great talk where he compares the winners and losers of the last 12 months. He then looks for patterns and themes in the two lists as a vehicle to pull out insights and develop predictions for the year ahead.
One of his many observations is the growing power of ‘algorithm businesses’. By his definition Galloway sees these c