Summary of Joy Buolamwini's Unmasking AI


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Get the Summary of Joy Buolamwini's Unmasking AI in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "Unmasking AI" by Joy Buolamwini is a comprehensive exploration of the biases present in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly facial recognition technology. Buolamwini's journey begins with her personal encounters with AI's failure to recognize her dark-skinned face, leading her to investigate the performance of AI systems from major companies. Her research reveals significant disparities in gender classification, especially for darker-skinned females...




Weapons of Math Destruction


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"A former Wall Street quantitative analyst sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling, a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality,"--NoveList.




You Look Like a Thing and I Love You


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As heard on NPR's "Science Friday," discover the book recommended by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant: an "accessible, informative, and hilarious" introduction to the weird and wonderful world of artificial intelligence (Ryan North). "You look like a thing and I love you" is one of the best pickup lines ever . . . according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog AI Weirdness. She creates silly AIs that learn how to name paint colors, create the best recipes, and even flirt (badly) with humans—all to understand the technology that governs so much of our daily lives. We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really... and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars? Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't. Like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world's best Halloween costume really "Vampire Hog Bride"? In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt—and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity. You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking. "I can't think of a better way to learn about artificial intelligence, and I've never had so much fun along the way." —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals




The Atlas of AI


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The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award-winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind "automated" services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.




Unmasking AI


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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The conscience of the AI revolution” (Fortune) explains how we’ve arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls. “AI is not coming, it’s here. If we answer the beautiful call inside these pages, we can decide who we are going to be and how we’re going to use technology in service of what it means to be fully human.”—Brené Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • Shortlisted for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award To most of us, it seems like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Dr. Joy Buolamwini, who has been at the forefront of AI research, this moment has been a long time in the making. After tinkering with robotics as a high school student in Memphis and then developing mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow, Buolamwini followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015. As a graduate student at the “Future Factory,” she did groundbreaking research that exposed widespread racial and gender bias in AI services from tech giants across the world. Unmasking AI goes beyond the headlines about existential risks produced by Big Tech. It is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls “the coded gaze”—the evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products—and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both the tech industry and the research sector, she shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity “excoded” and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them. Encouraging experts and non-experts alike to join this fight, Buolamwini writes, “The rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice. AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.”




The Big Nine


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A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.




Dare to Lead


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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.




Ways of Being


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Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings— beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us. At the same time, we’re only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we’ve failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others—the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us—are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we’ve built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world? The artist and maverick thinker James Bridle draws on biology and physics, computation, literature, art, and philosophy to answer these unsettling questions. Startling and bold, Ways of Being explores the fascinating, strange, and multitudinous forms of knowing, doing, and being that make up the world, and that are essential for our survival. Includes illustrations




Exemplars of Assessment in Higher Education


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Co-published with “While assessment may feel to constituents like an activity of accountability simply for accreditors, it is most appropriate to approach assessment as an activity of accountability for students. Assessment results that improve institutional effectiveness, heighten student learning, and better align resources serve to make institutions stronger for the benefit of their students, and those results also serve the institution or program well during the holistic evaluation required through accreditation.” – from the foreword by Heather Perfetti, President of the Middle States Commission on Higher EducationColleges and universities struggle to understand precisely what is being asked for by accreditors, and this book answers that question by sharing examples of success reported by schools specifically recommended by accreditors. This compendium gathers examples of assessment practice in twenty-four higher education institutions: twenty-three in the U.S. and one in Australia. All institutions represented in this book were suggested by their accreditor as having an effective assessment approach in one or more of the following assessment focused areas: assessment in the disciplines, co-curricular, course/program/institutional assessment, equity and inclusion, general education, online learning, program review, scholarship of teaching and learning, student learning, or technology. These examples recommended by accrediting agencies makes this a unique contribution to the assessment literature.The book is organized in four parts. Part One is focused on student learning and assessment and includes ten chapters. The primary focus for Part Two is student learning assessment from a disciplinary perspective and includes four chapters. Part Three has a faculty engagement and assessment focus, and Part Four includes four chapters on institutional effectiveness and assessment, with a focus on strategic planning.This book is a publication of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE), an organization of practitioners interested in using effective assessment practice to document and improve student learning.




Artificial Unintelligence


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A guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right. In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.