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

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Kate Crawford

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

by Kate Crawford (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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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.

ISBN-13

978-0300209570
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Yale University Press
Publication date

April 6, 2021
Language

English
File size

12527 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This study argues that [artificial intelligence] is neither artificial nor particularly intelligent. . . . A fascinating history of the data on which machine-learning systems are trained."—New Yorker

"Crawford argues passionately that while AI is presented as disembodied, objective and inevitable, it is material, biased and subject to our own outlooks and ideologies."—David A. Shaywitz, Wall Street Journal

”As Kate Crawford’s trenchant Atlas of AI demonstrates again and again, artificial intelligence does not come to us as a deus ex machina but, rather, through a number of dehumanizing extractive practices, of which most of us are unaware.“—Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books

“One of the world’s most thoughtful researchers on the impact of AI delivers a sobering, but essential, read about how AI is accelerating undemocratic governance and increased inequality.”—John Thornhill, Financial Times, Best Books of 2021

"Exposes the dark side of AI's success. . . . Meticulously researched and superbly written.”—Virginia Dignum, Nature

"A sweeping view of artificial intelligence that frames the technology as a collection of empires, decisions, and actions that are together fast eliminating possibilities of sustainable future on a global scale. . . . A timely and urgent contribution."—Michael Spezio, Science

“Reveals the hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from the consumption of natural resources to the more subtle costs to our privacy, equality and freedom”—Simon Ings, New Scientist ‘Best Books of the Year’

“A compelling new book”— Stephanie Wood, The Sydney Morning Herald

“Atlas of AI is a seminal work that brings AI within our circle of care...Crawford’s book is a great contribution to the field, as efforts are made at various levels, national and international, in companies and educational institutions, to mitigate the harms of this technology. Crawford underlines that this can only happen if we 'challenge the structures of power that AI currently reinforces and create the foundations for a different society.”—Anais Resseguier, AI and Ethics

“Crawford . . . takes AI from the world of Star Trek and makes it thick, human, and visceral.”—John Slattery, Commonweal

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles 2021

“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

“A must read. Moving from lithium mines to data extraction, from labor exploitation to government surveillance, Atlas of AI eloquently reveals how intelligence is 'made.' It displaces anemic calls for 'ethics' with probing investigations into the environmental degradation, capital accumulation, and labor conditions that AI makes possible.”—Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, SFU's Canada 150 Chair in New Media

“An insightful excursion into the processes, implications and ethics of data creation and manipulation in the 21st century. Ranging across terrains as diverse as mineral mines, server farms, distribution warehouses, and AI startups, Crawford shows vividly how our systems have grown to be 'dangerous when they fail and harmful when they work.'”—Joseph Turow, author of The Voice Catchers

"Showing Artificial Intelligence as a technological achievement and cultural promise that spans politics, labor, land, and data, Crawford draws a unique and actionable map for seeing and challenging AI’s power."—Mike Ananny, University of Southern California

"Kate Crawford looks at Artificial Intelligence with a humanist’s eye and an artist’s sense of what really matters. If you think AI is all about big data and machine learning, this marvelous book will remind you: it’s about the natural world, and politics, and history, and sometimes, even beauty too."—Fred Turner, author of The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of the social implications of AI. She is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and the inaugural chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08WKQ1MTM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (April 6, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 6, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 12527 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 336 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #200,129 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #50 in Telecommunications
- #109 in AI & Semantics
- #140 in Computers & Technology (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
272 ratings

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Kate Crawford

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Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. Her work has focused on understanding machine learning and AI in the wider contexts of history, politics, labor, and the environment.

She is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg, a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New York, and she currently holds the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Her academic research has been published in journals such as Nature, New Media & Society, Science, Technology & Human Values and Information, Communication & Society. Kate’s work also includes collaborative projects and visual investigations. Her project Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler – which maps the full lifecycle of the Amazon Echo – won the Beazley Design of the Year Award in 2019, and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the V&A Museum in London. Her collaboration with the artist Trevor Paglen produced the first major exhibition on training data, "Training Humans" and their investigative essay, Excavating AI, won the Ayrton Prize from the British Society for the History of Science.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

272 global ratings

5 star		65%
4 star		14%
3 star		16%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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Someone Like You

Page-turner

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2021

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I read this book in three sittings, and each of them flew by. The author is wicked smart. She loves the word "extract", which is kind of funny. My only issue is that too frequently she writes in this very abstracted mode. I needed more, "For example"'s or, "We see this sort of situation when xyz..."

I'm pleased to have written this review, because I loved the book and want the author to sell more copies, however I recognize (now) that these sentences mostly help Amazon by training its AI. Ugh.

5 people found this helpful

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Michael J. Bernaski

A Critical Perspective on the Hype and Reality of AI

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2021

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Of the many books I have read on AI, having been interested in the topic for 35 years, this is perhaps the most profound. When I read the abstract I thought the goals for the book were going to be almost impossible to achieve. But Kate Crawford has succeeded wonderfully. I find myself referring back to marked sections of the book — and perhaps most importantly questioning some long-held beliefs I have had on the topics. I have shared the book with friends with less time invested in the topic — and they were equally glowing. I hope this finds its way onto the summer reading lists of people with far-flung interests.

6 people found this helpful

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Jill Walker Rettberg

Engaging study of the underpinnings of AI

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2021

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This “atlas” maps what is often forgotten when discussing AI: material needs like the extraction of lithium and other minerals from the earth with the destruction of nature that requires and the workers, as well as the epistemological constraints of classification and the false proxies of data. The book is engagingly written and easy to follow while richly sourced. I’ll probably assign at least a couple of chapters to undergrads in our digital culture program. I would have loved an audio book version - but I listened to it using automatic text to speech on my phone and it was surprisingly not awful. This is the first time I’ve done that with a whole book.

9 people found this helpful

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A M

Embitterment in regard to AI

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2021

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AI is one of the most important innovations in the last decades. But the author of this book claims that the current application of AI is bad. It requires computers that use rare material, the mining of which harms the environment, and it uses inaccurate training data, to list some of the arguments presented in this book. But when considering these drawbacks against AI's blessing (automatic translation, contribution to medical research, etc.), the criticism seems to be not justified. The author blames AI for searching order in an infinitely complex world (in the Conclusion chapter), but she ignores that this is exactly what science does. The book also includes many interesting reviews of the history of science and AI. I enjoyed very much reading these reviews.

10 people found this helpful

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Newt Hoenikker

a smart book, but slow

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2021

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This is an intelligent book with good writing, but the pace is slow and it makes its points in very longwinded and roundabout ways. Maybe some people are looking for that and would enjoy it, but for me it was a bit tedious, taking way to long to get to the points being made.

3 people found this helpful

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Cliff

Brilliant Book

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2021

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Brilliant! Unlike any book on technology I’ve read. It opened my mind to new ways of thinking about AI. I've followed AI and machine learning closely for many years and this book lays out a unique roadmap for the next ten years, such as how to address the core questions of environmental harm, work and automation, and data harvesting. It’s beautifully written.. a rarity for books written by academics.

7 people found this helpful

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Masheika

Great info, but VERY dry

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2021

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I want to like this book. I respect the author. It's the exact subject matter that I'm most interested in. But it's soooo boring. I may have been spoiled by Jill Lepore and Brian Christian, but I just can't get into this. I'm glad to have purchased it, as I think the book needs to be supported. I think I'll try it again towards the end of the year.

7 people found this helpful

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Narbona

Tedious read!

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2021

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There were some good parts of the book (eg. lithium mining, rubber production), but the writing was, unfortunately tedious and dense.

11 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Matt J.

Tendentious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2022

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Interesting book but contains lot of blanket statements and conjecture that is assumed to be true - not very convincing. Clearly a very left-wing author, and she pushes her views (AI exists solely to perpetuate power structures, etc.) a little too much here, rather than laying out a reasoned, evidenced argument.

2 people found this helpful

R P THOMLINSON

Essential reading.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2021

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Comprehensive, authoritative and very lucidly written this book is essential reading for anyone who is interested in understanding the modern world and the way current technological trends are shaping it. This is no waffly polemic or mere technical manual, but a highly readable, thorough and thoughtful review of the way that the current data industry and its ethos is shaping the interactions of humans and the productive systems that sustain us. Comprehensively annotated with an extensive blibiography and index.

One person found this helpful

Paolo Di Giusto

Un libro eccellente

Reviewed in Italy on June 12, 2021

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Gli impatti sociali dell'Intelligenza Artificiale sono oggetto, orai, di numerosi studi. Credo che Crawford abbia fatto un lavoro che si pone un paio di gradini al di sopra degli altri. Il merito principale è quello di non essersi focalizzata su un singolo aspetto, ma di aver affrontato un ampio spettro di questioni, dalle materie prime (le miniere di terre rare, i consumi energetici) alle questioni militari (le uccisioni mirate compiute dai droni). Non tutti i capitoli sono allo stesso livello di completezza e profondità, ma il risultato complessivo è impressionante. Se dovessi scegliere un capitolo (ma perché poi?) opterei per quello sull'affective computing, quella branca dell'AI che si occupa dell'interazione "emozionale": dai robot-infermieri all'individuazione di presunti terroristi sulla base dell'espressione del viso. Crawford è una delle principali ricercatrici all'AI Now Institute, e con questo lavoro ha portato a sintesi anche il lavoro svolto in questi anni presso quell'istituzione. Eccellente. Buona lettura.
PS Il fatto che abbia acquistato, letto e recensito questo libro attraverso i vari servizi di Amazon non fa che rendere ancora più evidente la difficoltà che abbiamo tutti di comportarci in modo sensato.

4 people found this helpful

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Gautam Mukerjee

Important Red Flag

Reviewed in India on July 18, 2021

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Kate's book makes us understand how dangerous the AI Decision making platforms can be. This is a critical Red Flag for every company, Society and Government to remember and adhere to.
Sadly she hasn't touched on the benefits which are also immense. The good work done by Palantir on various social projects including UN Sub-Saharan food distribution which brought UN the Nobel Peace Prize has been omitted. This casts a doubt on the integrity of the writer. Is she so concerned with pushing one particular agenda that she will not look sideways to other aspects that are good ?
An important book but very One Dimensional.

Chris Purcell

Wide ranging history of the hidden costs of technology

Reviewed in Canada on May 18, 2021

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A few typos, but overall well written with an extraordinary depth of research. Includes footnotes, huge bibliography and index.
I recommend this to anyone thinking about AI, investing in AI, or developing AI "solutions". Spoiler alert, you may be creating new problems faster than fixing old ones. This not just about unethical software companies - the author rips into the entire environmentally destructive supply chain that enables AI to exist.

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