288 pages
English language
Published Jan. 21, 2021
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality, and freedom
“Eloquent, clear and profound—this volume is a classic for our times. It draws our attention away from the bright shiny objects of the new colonialism through elucidating the social, material and political dimensions of Artificial Intelligence.”—Geoffrey C. Bowker, University of California, Irvine
What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased racial, gender, and economic inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award‑winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects …
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality, and freedom
“Eloquent, clear and profound—this volume is a classic for our times. It draws our attention away from the bright shiny objects of the new colonialism through elucidating the social, material and political dimensions of Artificial Intelligence.”—Geoffrey C. Bowker, University of California, Irvine
What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased racial, gender, and economic inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award‑winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind “automated” services, to the data AI collects from us.
Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.
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
