Unmasking AINATIONAL 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. "Dr. Joy Buolamwini has been an essential figure in bringing irresponsible, profit-hungry tech giants to their knees. If you're going to read only one book about AI, this should be it."--Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation 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."
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AIAN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Wharton professor and author of the popular One Useful Thing Substack newsletter Ethan Mollick comes the definitive playbook for working, learning, and living in the new age of AI Something new entered our world in November 2022 -- the first general purpose AI that could pass for a human and do the kinds of creative, innovative work that only humans could do previously. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick immediately understood what ChatGPT meant: after millions of years on our own, humans had developed a kind of co-intelligence that could augment, or even replace, human thinking. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, Mollick urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher, and coach. He assesses its profound impact on business and education, using dozens of real-time examples of AI in action. Co-Intelligence shows what it means to think and work together with smart machines, and why it's imperative that we master that skill. Mollick challenges us to utilize AI's enormous power without losing our identity, to learn from it without being misled, and to harness its gifts to create a better human future. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.