Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
336 pages
English language
Published Aug. 16, 2022
What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? Drawing on more than a decade of research, award‑winning scholar Kate Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the minerals drawn from the earth to the labor pulled from low-wage information workers to the data taken from every action and expression.
Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequity. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a material and political perspective on what it takes to make AI and how it centralizes power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.
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.
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by big tech companies in line with much eugenic and colonial thought systems, highlighting how they are embedding outdated and bigoted ideas in the underlying bias of supposedly neutral systems.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.
