Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

Madhumita Murgia

Excellent book about the risks and effect that AI poses to us.

There are chapters on the data ecosystem (aka data colonization - or the human workforce that enters data that needs entering), content reviewers suffering trauma, applications - including health care, policing, and calculating wages for gig workers.

All of this is compelling. What struck me most was the apt analogy Murgia draws to Forster’s 1909 story “The Machine Stops”. It tells us of an apparatus humans become so utterly dependent on, one we’ve also become ignorant of its detail, design, and the decisions it makes.

If the current direction and risks aren’t important enough to give you pause, ask someone to trace a decision through a neural net for you sometime.