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

Kate Crawford

Dec 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Larissa Gallagher

About this audiobook

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.

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 Superieure.

Larissa Gallagher was born in Australia and is now based in Los Angeles. With a background as a classically trained actor and musical theater graduate, she works extensively in theater, animation, video games, and audiobooks.