Keir Semmens Former Google lead researcher Timnit Gebru. Source: TechCrunch, CC BY-SA. At the turn of the 20th century, the United States’ economy was dominated by an oligarchy of industrialists. More than 100 years after their zenith, their names still resonate: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Astor, Vanderbilt and Morgan among them. These men, known as the “robber barons”, amassed wealth and power by monopolising industries. Together they presided over the gilded age of American expansion. The era was also notoriously corrupt. The barons stopped at nothing as they built their empires. They acquired or crushed competitors, bought politicians and judges, fought unions and exploited workers. Their behaviour created a chasm of inequality across the nation. It took a Republican president — Theodore Roosevelt — to bring them to heel.