I rarely buy books without having a recommendation or solid reviews. This was bought on impulse in the lovely Winding Stair bookshop overlooking the Liffey in Dublin, while waiting for the airport express.
On the topic of AI, I had assumed it would be a tech-optimist overview of artificial intelligence/ Gen AI, riding the current bubble. If I’d paid more attention to the cover quotes, the comparison to Naomi Klein’s No Logo would have given me a better clue.
The book covers the human and societal impact of AI, with a wide ranging set of personal stories from across the planet. These range from the data entry jobs focussed on classifying text, imagery etc. to help train new AI, right through to people directly impacted by the actions of said models.
It’s eye opening to read about the huge number of people in very low-paid, and at times distressing, jobs that are essential to feeding these data-hungry training platforms. The concept of data colonialism is new but resonating to me; large corporations exploiting people who are desperately in need of employment, extracting value from them, tying them up in NDAs, but paying very low and unreliable wages.
Other examples of gig-economy workers being exploited by Uber and the like, and nation states such as China leveraging AI to repress citizens are more familiar but no less depressing.
It’s a really important topic and is an excellent counter to the tech bro spin that dominates current AI coverage.
