Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Algorithms For The People : Democracy In The Age Of Ai
 ISBN: 9780691244006Price: 29.95  
Volume: Dewey: 006.3Grade Min: Publication Date: 2023-01-10 
LCC: LCN: Q335Grade Max: Version:  
Contributor: Simons, JoshSeries: Publisher: Princeton University PressExtent: 320 
Contributor: Reviewer: Donald Z. SpicerAffiliation: formerly, University System of MarylandIssue Date: September 2023 
Contributor:     

While there are technology underpinnings to this book, its real subject is the politics of technology regulation. Increasingly, social and political decisions are made based on algorithms as applied to large data sets. Also increasingly, the algorithms are developed using machine learning, i.e., techniques for discovering patterns in data in order to make predictions. The first half of Algorithms for the People describes a systematic political theory of machine learning in general, and the second half focuses on the technical details in the context of Facebook and Google. Simons is a research fellow at Harvard who was a founding member of Facebook's Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) team. Given the real-world implications of technology-based decision-making and the public's heightened awareness of the influence of AI in society, this book is an important contribution to the literature. This reviewer's reading concurs with the dust cover copy: "instead of examining the impact of technology on democracy, [the author] explores how to put democracy at the heart of AI governance." This book should be in all technology and social science collections.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.