It should've been (and almost surely was) some specific person's job to sign off on this thing being at least reasonable before deploying it, which they failed

It should've been (and almost surely was) some specific person's job to sign off on this thing being at least reasonable before deploying it, which they failed to do. Successfully redirecting attention from that specific person's failure to do their job (and their manager who failed to ensure they were doing their job, etc) to the abstract idea of Algorithms is some exceptional accountability judo.