Atlas of AI : Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence

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Kate Crawford: Atlas of AI : Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence

English language

ISBN:
978-0-300-26463-0
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4 stars (1 review)

3 editions

Undermining Artificial Intelligence

4 stars

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by big tech companies in line with much eugenic and colonial thought systems, highlighting how they are embedding outdated and bigoted ideas in the underlying bias of supposedly neutral systems.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 …