Code Dependent: How AI Is Changing Our Lives ― Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction - Softcover

Murgia, Madhumita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1529097312 ISBN 13: 9781529097313

Publisher: Picador, 2024

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024

What does it mean to be human in a world that is rapidly changing with the development of artificial intelligence?

'Highly readable and deeply important' – The Guardian

'Exposes the hidden consequences of our existing AI technologies' – The Times

Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency – and shatter our illusion of free will.

AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small. In this compelling work, Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.

'The intimate investigation of AI that we’ve been waiting for, and it arrives not a moment too soon.' – Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

'A nuanced, thoughtful and very accessible picture of a world deeply affected by AI' – Martha Lane Fox

About this title

About the Author

Madhumita Murgia is the first Artificial Intelligence Editor of the Financial Times and has been writing about AI, for Wired and the FT, for over a decade. Born and raised in India, she studied biology and immunology at Oxford University. Code Dependent is her first book, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. She lives in London.

From the Back Cover

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly

A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making

On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience―unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community.

AI has already infiltrated our day-to-day, through language-generating chatbots like ChatGPT and social media. But it’s also affecting us in more insidious ways. It touches everything from our interpersonal relationships, to our kids’ education, work, finances, public services, and even our human rights.

By highlighting the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from the cozy enclave of Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often-exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Murgia exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency, and shatter our illusion of free will.

The ways in which algorithms and their effects are governed over the coming years will profoundly impact us all. Yet we can’t agree on a common path forward. We cannot decide what preferences and morals we want to encode in these entities―or what controls we may want to impose on them. And thus, we are collectively relinquishing our moral authority to machines.

In Code Dependent, Murgia not only sheds light on this chilling phenomenon, but also charts a path of resistance. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small, and Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1529097312
• ISBN 13: 9781529097313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320