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Mashable's series Algorithms explores the mysterious lines of code that increasingly control our lives - and our futures. The world in 2020 has been given plenty of reasons to be wary of algorithms. Depending on the result of the U.S. presidential election, it may give us one more. Either way, it's high time we questioned the impact of these high-tech data-driven calculations, which increasingly determine who or what we see (and what we don't) online. The impact of algorithms is starting to scale up to a dizzying degree, and literally billions of people are feeling the ripple effects. This is the year the Social Credit System, an ominous Black Mirror-like "behavior score" run by the Chinese government, is set to officially launch. It may not be quite as bad as you've heard, but it will boost or tighten financial credit and other incentives for the entire population. There's another billion unexamined, unimpeachable algorithms hanging over a billion human lives.

Blame the algorithm. That's become the go-to refrain for why your Instagram feed keeps surfacing the same five people or why YouTube is feeding you questionable "up next" video recommendations. But you should blame the algorithm - those ubiquitous instructions that tell computer programs what to do - for more than messing with your social media feed. Algorithms are behind many mundane, but still consequential, decisions in your life. The code often replaces humans, but that doesn't mean the results are foolproof. An algorithm can be just as flawed as their human creators. These are just some of the ways hidden calculations determine what you do and experience.

When creating a machine-learning algorithm, designers have to make many choices: what data to train it on, what specific questions to ask, how to use predictions that the algorithm produces. These choices leave room for discrimination, particularly against people who have been discriminated against in the past. For example, training an algorithm to select potential medical students on a data set that reflects longtime biases against women and people of color may make these groups less likely to be admitted. In computing, the phrase "garbage in, garbage out" describes how poor-quality input leads to poor-quality output. In this case we might say, "White male doctors in, white male doctors out."

Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation's series on the science of free will.

A series of short articles, with videos and browser addons "investigating algorithmic injustice and the formulas that influence our lives."

Have you ever you looked for a product online and then been recommended the exact thing you need to complement it? Or have you been thinking about a particular purchase, only to receive an email with that product on sale? All of this may give you a slightly spooky feeling, but what you're really experiencing is the result of complex algorithms used to predict, and in some cases, even influence your behaviour.

Algorithms are increasingly making decisions that affect ordinary people's lives. One example of this is so-called "algorithmic lending", with some companies claiming to have reduced the time it takes to approve a home loan to mere minutes. But can computers become better judges of financial risk than human bank tellers? Some computer scientists and data analysts certainly think so.

Algorithms decide which applications reach human managers' eyes. But they sort out people with unusual work histories or who lack college degrees

the use of historical data to train the AI gives 'a leg-up to people from groups who have traditionally been successful and grants fewer opportunities to minorities and women'.