Kate Crawford

Back in the day, when William Gibson was in his prime and "cyberpunk" as sub-genre was still the hot thing, Gibson, when asked whether he considered the world depicted in "Neuromancer" to be a dystopia, thought not. Gibson believed that a true dystopia based on the concepts he was playing with would be an exercise in "corporate feudalism."

Flash forward to the 2020s and, guess what, the new captains of industry like Mark Zuckerburg, Peter Thiel, and Jeff Bezos, seem to be in the process of reducing civil society to nothing but data for their commercial enterprises to exploit. Many of the issues that Crawford is dealing with in regards to AI as the next expression of "Big Data" are not unfamiliar to me; the massive consumption of expensive raw materials and energy, the exploited workforce needed to tie these enterprises together, and the running roughshod over personal privacy and intellectual property rights. This is not even getting into the whole issue of dubious product output as a result of lack of self-examination of preconceptions by the proprietors. However, this book does a good job of tying all these issues together for the individual not previously aware that there is a big issue here; it's not the last word on the subject, but it's a start.

The depressing issue is that between the burgeoning Cold War 2.0, and the relative weakness of contemporary anti-trust mechanisms, I'm not hopeful that the wake-up call for the issues here are going to show up in time to stave off the worst outcomes.… (more)

Important book looking at the broader contexf of AI work, its dependencies and application. It offers many important critiques to actors from companies to states that are applying the technology without a sense of the potential risks.

The problem with the book is that it offers a critique that is impractical and unrealistic in its high ground standing. The style is typical of the kind of jiurnalistic expose’ that leaves you asking for a rational alternative.

Nevertheless this is a must read for anyone working with AI.… (more)