Atlas of AI

Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence

By: Kate Crawford

Narrated by: Larissa Gallagher

The hidden costs of artificial intelligence - from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality, and freedom.

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. This book 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.

©2021 Kate Crawford (P)2021 Tantor

Required listening for all

Places the current AI industry into proper context, something important for us consumers to never lose sight of.

A fascinating and thought provoking examination of

This book offers a very different and refreshing angle on AI from others I've read, exploring the environmental and human impacts, and how AI systems are built on very human systems, inevitably taking on their biases and blind spots. Highly recommended for anyone interested in technology.

Performance a little dry

Found the chosen narration to be a bit dry. But text itself was informative, researched, and interesting.

Thought provoking questions but few answers or solutions.

The questions asked by Kate Crawford are all very good ones and are deeply thought provoking. She offers many valid critiques to tech companies and the AI technology as a whole but does little else. Much of her criticism comes from her opinions the nature of power. Which asserts as fact at times and it undermines some of the better points I think she has. This book will do little to persuade people who do not already agree with her politics and I think that’s a weakness. I do still recommend it as I think it is, as I started this review, thought provoking.

Should be compulsory reading for every human being

I have long believed that the current AI is little more than a glorified word processor but had not realised the way that it has been used to monitor what we do, especially at work.

This book will change how you see AI and how it is bring used today and perhaps make us all aware of the challenges and costs that AI brings to our society and the kind of of society we want to live in.