Download or read book The Tyranny of Algorithms written by Miguel Benasayag and published by Europa Editions UK. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of the digital world and its algorithms on human beings and society We read all sorts of things about AI, as the promise of a future happiness or as a threat capable of putting an end to humanity. While we cannot be "for" or "against" AI – it's already here, and not likely to disappear any time soon - the question we face is how to exist as human beings - individually, socially, collectively - in a world governed by algorithms. Since the dawn of humanity, technological objects have intersected with the human mind: it is we who have shaped them; but as we use them, they in turn shape our brain. With the development of new technologies, this hybridization is becoming more and more apparent, and machines now threaten to colonize us, if we use them badly. AI allows us to make many kinds of work easier, but these benefits often come at the cost of reducing a person to a set of micro-data, far removed from the human characteristics that define him. Worse yet: the whole economy is now subject to the "decisions" suggested by machines. We have entered an era of algorithmic governmentality, in which leaders have deliberately delegated their decision-making to AI. How, then, can we still talk about democracy? And consequently, how can we organize collective action, confronted by a power that is based on the supposed infallibility of machines? Benasayag gives his considered answers in this short but illuminating book, a hybrid of essay and interview.
Download or read book Sensemaking written by Christian Madsbjerg and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on his work at some of the world's largest companies, including Ford, Adidas, and Chanel, Christian Madsbjerg's Sensemaking is a provocative stand against the tyranny of big data and scientism, and an urgent, overdue defense of human intelligence. Humans have become subservient to algorithms. Every day brings a new Moneyball fix--a math whiz who will crack open an industry with clean fact-based analysis rather than human intuition and experience. As a result, we have stopped thinking. Machines do it for us. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings. Too many companies have lost touch with the humanity of their customers, while marginalizing workers with liberal arts-based skills. Contrary to popular thinking, Madsbjerg shows how many of today's biggest success stories stem not from "quant" thinking but from deep, nuanced engagement with culture, language, and history. He calls his method sensemaking. In this landmark book, Madsbjerg lays out five principles for how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals can use it to solve their thorniest problems. He profiles companies using sensemaking to connect with new customers, and takes readers inside the work process of sensemaking "connoisseurs" like investor George Soros, architect Bjarke Ingels, and others. Both practical and philosophical, Sensemaking is a powerful rejoinder to corporate groupthink and an indispensable resource for leaders and innovators who want to stand out from the pack.
Download or read book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned written by Kenneth O. Stanley and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated -- and nearly everything in-between -- our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the objective obsession has gone too far. They make the case that great achievement can't be bottled up into mechanical metrics; that innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort; and that we would be wiser (and the outcomes better) if instead we whole-heartedly embraced serendipitous discovery and playful creativity. Controversial at its heart, yet refreshingly provocative, this book challenges readers to consider life without a destination and discovery without a compass.
Download or read book Automate This written by Christopher Steiner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What happens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.
Download or read book The Black Box Society written by Frank Pasquale and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior—silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do so—and to set limits on how big data affects our lives. Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior. Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.
Download or read book AI 2041 written by Kai-Fu Lee and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How will AI change our world within twenty years? A pioneering technologist and acclaimed writer team up for a “dazzling” (The New York Times) look at the future that “brims with intriguing insights” (Financial Times). This edition includes a new foreword by Kai-Fu Lee. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Financial Times Long before the advent of ChatGPT, Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan understood the enormous potential of artificial intelligence to transform our daily lives. But even as the world wakes up to the power of AI, many of us still fail to grasp the big picture. Chatbots and large language models are only the beginning. In this “inspired collaboration” (The Wall Street Journal), Lee and Chen join forces to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In ten gripping, globe-spanning short stories and accompanying commentary, their book introduces readers to an array of eye-opening settings and characters grappling with the new abundance and potential harms of AI technologies like deep learning, mixed reality, robotics, artificial general intelligence, and autonomous weapons.
Download or read book Weapons of Math Destruction written by Cathy O'Neil and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2016 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A former Wall Street quantitative analyst sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling, a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality,"--NoveList.
Download or read book Mining of Massive Datasets written by Jure Leskovec and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its second edition, this book focuses on practical algorithms for mining data from even the largest datasets.
Download or read book The Future of Digital Surveillance written by Yong Jin Park and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are willing participants in our own surveillance
Download or read book Algorithmic Cultures written by Robert Seyfert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides in-depth and wide-ranging analyses of the emergence, and subsequent ubiquity, of algorithms in diverse realms of social life. The plurality of Algorithmic Cultures emphasizes: 1) algorithms’ increasing importance in the formation of new epistemic and organizational paradigms; and 2) the multifaceted analyses of algorithms across an increasing number of research fields. The authors in this volume address the complex interrelations between social groups and algorithms in the construction of meaning and social interaction. The contributors highlight the performative dimensions of algorithms by exposing the dynamic processes through which algorithms – themselves the product of a specific approach to the world – frame reality, while at the same time organizing how people think about society. With contributions from leading experts from Media Studies, Social Studies of Science and Technology, Cultural and Media Sociology from Canada, France, Germany, UK and the USA, this volume presents cutting edge empirical and conceptual research that includes case studies on social media platforms, gaming, financial trading and mobile security infrastructures.
Download or read book What Algorithms Want written by Ed Finn and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gap between theoretical ideas and messy reality, as seen in Neal Stephenson, Adam Smith, and Star Trek. We depend on—we believe in—algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations—the marriage vow, the shaman's curse—do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical thinking. In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking. Finn argues that the algorithm deploys concepts from the idealized space of computation in a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to Diderot's Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, Finn explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. He examines the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost's satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. He describes Google's goal of anticipating our questions, Uber's cartoon maps and black box accounting, and what Facebook tells us about programmable value, among other things. If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, Finn argues, we need to build a model of “algorithmic reading” and scholarship that attends to process, spearheading a new experimental humanities.
Download or read book Algorithmic Democracy written by Domingo García-Marzá and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Feel of Algorithms written by Minna Ruckenstein and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-05-23 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we feel excited, afraid, and frustrated by algorithms? The Feel of Algorithms brings relatable first-person accounts of what it means to experience algorithms emotionally alongside interdisciplinary social science research, to reveal how political and economic processes are felt in the everyday. People's algorithm stories might fail to separate fact and misconception, and circulate wishful, erroneous, or fearful views of digital technologies. Yet rather than treating algorithmic folklore as evidence of ignorance, this novel book explains why personal anecdotes are an important source of algorithmic knowledge. Minna Ruckenstein argues that we get to know algorithms by feeling their actions and telling stories about them. The Feel of Algorithms shows how taking everyday algorithmic emotions seriously would balances the current discussion, which has a tendency to draw conclusions based on celebratory or oppositional responses to imagined future effects. An everyday focus zooms into experiences of pleasure, fear, and irritation, highlighting how political aims and ethical tensions play out in visions, practices, and emotional responses. This book shows that feelings aid in recognizing troubling practices, and also calls for alternatives that are currently ignored or suppressed.
Download or read book The Threats of Algorithms and AI to Civil Rights Legal Remedies and American Jurisprudence written by Alfred R. Cowger and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Threats of Algorithms and A.I. to Civil Rights, Legal Remedies, and American Jurisprudence addresses the many threats to American jurisprudence caused by the growing use of algorithms and artificial intelligence (A.I.). Although algorithms prove valuable to society, that value may also lead to the destruction of the foundations of American jurisprudence by threatening constitutional rights of individuals, creating new liabilities for business managers and board members, disrupting commerce, interfering with long-standing legal remedies, and causing chaos in courtrooms trying to adjudge lawsuits. Alfred R. Cowger, Jr. explains these threats and provides potential solutions for both the general public and legal practitioners. Scholars of legal studies, media studies, and political science will find this book particularly useful.
Download or read book Turing s Revolution written by Giovanni Sommaruga and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of the confluence of ideas in Turing’s era and work and examines the impact of his work on mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. It combines contributions by well-known scientists on the history and philosophy of computability theory as well as on generalised Turing computability. By looking at the roots and at the philosophical and technical influence of Turing’s work, it is possible to gather new perspectives and new research topics which might be considered as a continuation of Turing’s working ideas well into the 21st century.
Download or read book Algorithmic Intimacy written by Anthony Elliott and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artificial intelligence not only powers our cars, hospitals and courtrooms: predictive algorithms are becoming deeply lodged inside us too. Machine intelligence is learning our private preferences and discreetly shaping our personal behaviour, telling us how to live, who to befriend and who to date. In Algorithmic Intimacy, Anthony Elliott examines the power of predictive algorithms in reshaping personal relationships today. From Facebook friends and therapy chatbots to dating apps and quantified sex lives, Elliott explores how machine intelligence is working within us, amplifying our desires and steering our personal preferences. He argues that intimate relationships today are threatened not by the digital revolution as such, but by the orientation of various life strategies unthinkingly aligned with automated machine intelligence. Our reliance on algorithmic recommendations, he suggests, reflects a growing emergency in personal agency and human bonds. We need alternatives, innovation and experimentation for the interpersonal, intimate effort of ongoing translation back and forth between the discourses of human and machine intelligence. Accessible and compelling, this book sheds fresh light on the impact of artificial intelligence on the most intimate aspects of our lives. It will appeal to students in the social sciences and humanities and to a wide range of general readers.
Download or read book Re Engineering Humanity written by Brett Frischmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day, new warnings emerge about artificial intelligence rebelling against us. All the while, a more immediate dilemma flies under the radar. Have forces been unleashed that are thrusting humanity down an ill-advised path, one that's increasingly making us behave like simple machines? In this wide-reaching, interdisciplinary book, Brett Frischmann and Evan Selinger examine what's happening to our lives as society embraces big data, predictive analytics, and smart environments. They explain how the goal of designing programmable worlds goes hand in hand with engineering predictable and programmable people. Detailing new frameworks, provocative case studies, and mind-blowing thought experiments, Frischmann and Selinger reveal hidden connections between fitness trackers, electronic contracts, social media platforms, robotic companions, fake news, autonomous cars, and more. This powerful analysis should be read by anyone interested in understanding exactly how technology threatens the future of our society, and what we can do now to build something better.
