Using algorithms to determine character

New York

COMPUTERS aren't just doing hard mathematical problems and showing us cat videos. Increasingly, they judge our character.

Maybe we should be grateful.

A company in Palo Alto, California, called Upstart has over the past 15 months lent US$130 million to people with mostly negligible credit scores. Typically, they are recent graduates without mortgages, car payments or credit card histories.

Those are among the things that normally …