Recommendations from our site
“The subtitle is ‘Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence.’ One of the things I like about it is that it’s very readable. She tells stories about how she drove to this place out in the middle of a desert where there are data centers. She’s taking you on journeys to different places around the world and within workplaces. In a sense, it’s really heavy reading, because it’s serious stuff, but it’s easy to read. She makes it really accessible.” Read more...
“In her view, AI technologies are neither artificial, nor particularly intelligent. AI masks a very complex supply chain and very complex set of industrial processes that bury within them really deep inequalities and disparities in power. What she aims to do in the book is take that structuralist and political analysis and bring to the fore what happens behind what we think of as the magic of our phones opening up when they see our faces. “ Read more...
Azeem Azhar, Technologist
“Then there is another book I want to mention in passing called Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford. That one fulfils a similar purpose in that it mentions many of the biggest problems with AI and tech. But it does so from a very interesting perspective, and that is the material sustenance and composition of AI. It’s about what these machines are made of and who makes them. It’s about the mines that are used to extract the metals necessary to build phones and to build data servers and so on. The main thesis of the book is that artificial intelligence is neither artificial—because it actually depends on the natural environment—nor is it genuine intelligence. This book is very well-tuned to problems of power, and how AI gets used to enhance power asymmetries that are worrisome for labour rights and civil rights.”
The best books on Digital Ethics recommended by Carissa Véliz
Our most recommended books
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Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
by Nick Bostrom -
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
by Kate Crawford -
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
by Peter Norvig & Stuart Russell -
The Singularity Is Near
by Ray Kurzweil -
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
by Cathy O'Neil -
Machine Learning
by Tom M Mitchell
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