Kate Crawford argues that artificial intelligence is neither thin nor ethereal, but a physical industry built on heavy resource extraction. She traces the production cycle of machine learning from the lithium mines of Nevada to the data centers consuming massive amounts of electricity. The book details how underpaid labor forces label datasets to train vision systems and how biometric surveillance categorizes human emotion. Crawford demonstrates that AI functions as a tool for centralized political and corporate power rather than an objective mathematical truth.
This book is intended for researchers, policymakers, and students of technology who want to understand the material infrastructure of computing. Readers learn how to look past the marketing of software to see the environmental impact and labor conditions required to sustain digital automation. By the end, they grasp how data collection reinforces social hierarchies and why current technical systems are inseparable from global capitalist interests. The text provides a framework for analyzing technology through the lenses of geography, law, and history.
Deep and outward-looking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Systems Thinker. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2021
- Publisher
- Yale University Press
- ISBN
- 9780300209570
- Language
- EN
