Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

“It’s a good one to start with because it’s very well-written and super accessible. This is a great book with a memorable title. It’s very comprehensive and she has excellent examples—about getting insurance or jobs, how we evaluate people at work and in civic life. The book also has a lot of authority, because the author is a mathematician arguing that maths is not neutral, and that values are always baked into different algorithms.” Read more...

The best books on Digital Ethics

Carissa Véliz, Philosopher

“This book is a really fantastic analysis of how quantification, the collection of data, the modelling around data, the predictions made by using data, the algorithmic and quantifiable ways of predicting behaviour based on data, are all built by elites for elites and end up, quite frankly, screwing over everybody else.” Read more...

The best books on Silicon Valley

Ramesh Srinivasan, Technologist

“One of the reasons why I’ve put this on the list, apart from the fact that it’s really interesting and important in its own right, is because AI certainly makes use of algorithms and a huge amount of data. One of the things that we need to think about is not simply the big picture Terminator situation where we’re going to get gunned down by killer robots, but also questions about automated calculation of results which AI can only speed up, and about how that’s raising really important ethical and social questions that are already here with us now.” Read more...

The best books on Ethics for Artificial Intelligence

Paula Boddington