This book takes a philosophical look at traditional technological tools such as hammers and drills as well as the modern: autonomous cars, ChatGPT, smartphones, apps, steam engines, nuclear power plants, computers, and many other systems that surround us. The three main questions tackled are:Is technology neutral? Or is the design often intertwined with a Western or gendered perspective?What are the ethical risks of AI? Is it necessarily biased? Is the climate probl...

Three of the world’s most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society—and what this technology means for us all.Generative AI is filling the internet with false information. Artists, writers, and many other professionals are in fear of their jobs. AI is discovering new medicines, running military drones, and transforming the world around us—yet we do not understand the decisions i...

Revealing the unfolding story of Artificial Intelligence, Richard Susskind presents a short non-technical guide that challenges us to think differently about AI. Susskind brings AI out of computing laboratories, big tech companies, and start-ups - and into everyday life. In recent years, and certainly since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been massive public and professional interest in Artificial Intelligence. But people are confused about what AI is, what it can and can...

For many, technology offers hope for the future—that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spark this hope in a particular way. They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome—not by us, but by our machines. Yet rather than open new futures, today's powerful AI technologies reproduce the past. Forged from oceans of our data into immensely powerful but flawed mirrors...

"A splendid new book. . . . Takes on—and mostly demolishes—the conventional narrative about the acceleration of life in a digital world." ― ObserverMost of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sol...

Fears about AI tell us more about capitalism today than technology in the future.Will AI come and take all our jobs? Will it dominate humanity, hack the foundations of our civilization, or even wipe humans of the face of the planet? All kinds of people seem to think so. From academics to billionaires, artists to fraudsters, journalists to the pope, AI nightmares have gripped the popular imagination. Why We Fear AI boldly asserts these fears are actually ab...

A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This “bigger mind”—human and machine capabilities working together—has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big...

A bold and imaginative critique of the hidden costs of digital life – and a manifesto for a better future . . .At the turn of the millennium, digital technologies seemed to have immense promise for transforming our society. With these powerful new tools, the thinking went, we would be free to live our best lives, connected to our communities in ways full of infinite potential.A quarter of a century on, this form of utopianism seems like a cruel mirage. Our ...

A provocative analysis of what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change.In The Techno-Human Condition, Braden Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz explore what it means to be human in an era of incomprehensible technological complexity and change. They argue that if we are to have any prospect of managing that complexity, we will need to escape the shackles of current assumptions about rationality, progress, and certain...

Mediatization has emerged as a key concept to reconsider old, yet fundamental questions about the role and influence of media in culture and society. In particular the theory of mediatization has proved fruitful for the analysis of how media spread to, become intertwined with, and influence other social institutions and cultural phenomena like politics, play and religion.This book presents a major contribution to the theoretical understanding of the mediatization of culture and soc...

An exploration of the political qualities of technology design, as seen in projects that span art, computer science, and consumer products.In Adversarial Design, Carl DiSalvo examines the ways that technology design can provoke and engage the political. He describes a practice, which he terms “adversarial design,” that uses the means and forms of design to challenge beliefs, values, and what is taken to be fact. It is not simply applying design to politics...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen major advances in recent years. While machines were always central to the Marxist analysis of capitalism, AI is a new kind of machine that Marx could not have anticipated. Contemporary machine-learning AI allows machines to increasingly approach human capacities for perception and reasoning in narrow domains.This book explores the relationship between Marxist theory and AI through the lenses of different theoretical concepts, including surplus-...