New Materials at Frederick A. Marcotte Library

ANTHEM AWARD WINNER * NAMED A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 AI is on the brink of dominating our lives, threating our privacy and human future--if we don't take action now.    In The Algorithm, Emmy‑award winning Wall Street Journal and Guardian contributor Hilke Schellmann delivers a shocking and illuminating exposé on one of the most pressing civil rights issues of our time: how AI has quietly, and mostly out of sight, taken over the world of work.    Schellmann takes readers on a journalistic detective story, meeting job applicants and employees who have been subjected to these technologies, playing AI-based video games that companies use for hiring, and investigating algorithms that scan our online activity to construct personality profiles-- including if we are prone to self -harm.  She convinces whistleblowers to share results of faulty AI -tools, and tests algorithms that analyze job candidates' facial expressions and tools that predict from our voices if we are anxious or depressed.  Schellmann finds employees whose every keystrokes were tracked and AI that analyzes group discussions or even predicts when someone may leave a company. Her reporting reveals in detail how much employers already know about us and how little we know about the technologies that are used on us.   The Algorithm tells an even bigger story with Schellmann discovering faulty algorithms and systemic discrimination of women and people of color, which may have already harmed thousands of job seekers and employees.  It advocates to go beyond these tools to more thoughtfully consider how we hire, promote, and treat human beings--with or without AI.  As Schellmann emphasizes, we need to decide how we build algorithmic tools in any industry and what protections we need to put in place in an AI-driven world.   Hilke Schellmann is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter and journalism professor at NYU.  Her work covering artificial intelligence has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, the MIT Technology Review, and The Wall Street Journal, where she led a team investigating how AI is changing our lives.  She has also reported for NPR's Planet Money podcast on fake online reviews and her investigation for VICE on HBO was a finalist for a Peabody Award.  Her PBS Frontline documentary Outlawed in Pakistan premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was honored with an Emmy award.

A new approach to the challenges surrounding artificial intelligence that argues for assessing AI actions as if they came from a human being   "Elegant and erudite."--John Thornhill, Financial Times   Intelligent machines present us every day with urgent ethical challenges. Is the facial recognition software used by an agency fair? When algorithms determine questions of justice, finance, health, and defense, are the decisions proportionate, equitable, transparent, and accountable? How do we harness this extraordinary technology to empower rather than oppress?   Despite increasingly sophisticated programming, artificial intelligences share none of our essential human characteristics--sentience, physical sensation, emotional responsiveness, versatile general intelligence. However, Nigel Shadbolt and Roger Hampson argue, if we assess AI decisions, products, and calls for action as if they came from a human being, we can avert a disastrous and amoral future. The authors go beyond the headlines about rampant robots to apply established moral principles in shaping our AI future. Their new framework constitutes a how-to for building a more ethical machine intelligence.

 

Cutting through the mass of technical literature on machine learning and AI and the plethora of fear-mongering books on the rise of killer robots, Secrets of Machine Learning offers a clear-sighted explanation for the informed reader of what this new technology is, what it does, how it works, and why it's so important. The surge in computer processing power along with the sheer quantities of training data available, means machine learning is now possible in ways wholly unthinkable just five years ago. Computers can recognize potential lung cancer better than doctors, detect fraud better than bankers, and create fake video almost impossible to tell from the real thing. And next, they are likely to drive our cars. Journalist and news product manager Tom Kohn gets to the heart of the revolutionary new technology that is developing all around us, explaining with precision how the different facets of machine learning work, how companies are using it, and why it is permeating all parts of society right now. The book guides readers through the arcane science and jargon in a clear and understandable way, but is detailed enough that it doesn't gloss over the hard technical concepts. If you want to know why Siri sometimes misunderstands you, how Netflix recommends your movies, and how machine learning will affect your job - read this book.