Awkward Intelligence: Where AI Goes Wrong, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do about It
- 5h 10m
- Katharina A. Zweig
- The MIT Press
- 2022
An expert offers a guide to where we should use artificial intelligence—and where we should not.
Before we know it, artificial intelligence (AI) will work its way into every corner of our lives, making decisions about, with, and for us. Is this a good thing? There's a tendency to think that machines can be more “objective” than humans—can make better decisions about job applicants, for example, or risk assessments. In Awkward Intelligence, AI expert Katharina Zweig offers readers the inside story, explaining how many levers computer and data scientists must pull for AI's supposedly objective decision making. She presents the good and the bad: AI is good at processing vast quantities of data that humans cannot—but it's bad at making judgments about people.
AI is accurate at sifting through billions of websites to offer up the best results for our search queries and it has beaten reigning champions in games of chess and Go. But, drawing on her own research, Zweig shows how inaccurate AI is, for example, at predicting whether someone with a previous conviction will become a repeat offender. It's no better than simple guesswork, and yet it's used to determine people's futures.
Zweig introduces readers to the basics of AI and presents a toolkit for designing AI systems. She explains algorithms, big data, and computer intelligence, and how they relate to one another. Finally, she explores the ethics of AI and how we can shape the process. With Awkward Intelligence, Zweig equips us to confront the biggest question concerning AI: where we should use it—and where we should not.
About the Author
Katharina A. Zweig is Professor of Computer Science at the TU Kaiserslautern in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Noah Harley lives in New York's Hudson Valley, where he divides his time between translating (largely) academic works from German, performing and writing music under Noah B. Harley, and hiking in the beautiful and rocky Catskill Mountains. This is his first translation for MIT Press.
In this Book
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Robo-Judges… with Poor Judgment
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The Fact Factories of the Natural Sciences
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Algorithms: Instructions for Computers
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Big Data and Data Mining
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Computer Intelligence
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Machine Learning versus People
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Are We Literate Yet?
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Algorithms, Discrimination, and Ideology
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How to Stay in Control
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Who Wants Machines Making Decisions about People, Anyway?
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It's Time for “The Talk” about Strong AI
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Postscript
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Glossary
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Notes
