Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
English language
Published Jan. 1, 2022 by Yale University Press.
De una forma original y certera Kate Crawford nos guía por las capas que debemos analizar cuando pensamos en IA. Es un informe que se lee como una novela, y eso pocas veces pasa. Muy recomendado.
Pues un ensayo estupendo que analiza todo ese ecosistema de la IA que no se ve: desde los costes medioambientales y humanos a la escurridiza cuestión de los sesgos inherentes y la dificultad de una IA ética. Sin duda, uno de los ensayos del 2023, de esos imprescindibles para entender el mundo en que habitamos.
Kate Crawford pulls back the curtain on AI, starting from the minerals and energy necessary for the expansion of the technology, to the workers that make these systems possible, to the methodologies and data sources that drive the sector. Through it all Crawford applies a rigorous, critical eye to the claims of boosters.
While this is a widely accessible book, it does skew towards philosophical phrasing, which reads strangely if you're unfamiliar with that kind of academic discourse. Beyond that, it was a bit unfortunate that Crawford doesn't apply the same rigor to analyzing claims about what company X does with technology or sparse media reports, often relying on a single media report or anecdote to state a point as fact. That being said, this is still an essential book for anyone building, using, or thinking of using any class of AI technology. Highly recommend
"Refusal requires rejecting the idea that the same tools that serve capital, militaries, and police are also fit to transform schools, hospitals, cities, and ecologies, as though they were value neutral calculators that can be applied everywhere."
Atlas of AI manages to dig deep into the systems and cost of Artificial Intelligence without ever overcomplicating the ideas for a general reader. Using contemporary feminist philosophy, Crawford compares extraction of minerals to extraction of data to extraction of labour, and concludes that a revised understanding of technology is needed.
One of the main arguments, which is very well developed throughout, places AI research by big tech companies in line with much eugenic and colonial thought systems, highlighting how they are embedding outdated and bigoted ideas in the underlying bias of supposedly neutral systems. Similarly, the colonial patterns of extractive human labour that are used to train such systems, and that provide the materials needed to operate them, are overlooked by most companies who develop or sell these systems.
A couple of small complaints: the last couple of chapters become a little journalistic and US-centric, and while Crawford hits …
Atlas of AI manages to dig deep into the systems and cost of Artificial Intelligence without ever overcomplicating the ideas for a general reader. Using contemporary feminist philosophy, Crawford compares extraction of minerals to extraction of data to extraction of labour, and concludes that a revised understanding of technology is needed.
One of the main arguments, which is very well developed throughout, places AI research by big tech companies in line with much eugenic and colonial thought systems, highlighting how they are embedding outdated and bigoted ideas in the underlying bias of supposedly neutral systems. Similarly, the colonial patterns of extractive human labour that are used to train such systems, and that provide the materials needed to operate them, are overlooked by most companies who develop or sell these systems.
A couple of small complaints: the last couple of chapters become a little journalistic and US-centric, and while Crawford hits out at many big tech companies, she seems reluctant to criticise her own employer, Microsoft (this may be contractual, but is pronounced). But these are minor issues in a book that covers more ground than most, presenting complex and long-considered research.
recommended to all the policy-makers, computer scientists, data analysts etc etc that will probably never read it, sigh
