That was the week when pupils got the A-Level results for exams they never sat.

For many, their grades were down and the balloon went up.

And apparently to blame was a like massive computer says no

with the G. CSE results out today it got us here thinking how much of

our lives are becoming subject to calculations contained within microchips.

We just need to not see them as magical. We need to see algorithms as what they are, which is tools designed by humans for human purposes.

You're listening to stories of our times and the Times and the Sunday Times.

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I went to see him on Friday and did an interview with him. So let's start with the big issue in front of us and the A-Level grades.

He was absolutely categoric as we sat around on the big sofa and he said that there will be no

U-turn and no change.

That Stephen Swinford deputy political editor at the Times speaking to us from the noisy Times

office. The man he's talking about is the

education secretary Gavin Williamson. And 72 hours later that policy was

completely reversed. Tell me about that discussion last Friday.

I went to see him at the Department for Education and I was kind of increasingly

bewildered by the government's position on it.

You could see the inequities, you could see these awful videos of kids crying who had been marked down

disadvantaged children in particular and they were all going viral on the

internet and yet the line wasn't changing it wasn't just algorithm says no it was like

...