Code Dependent: Living in the shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia is a gripping read. She’s the FT’s AI Editor, so the book is well-written and benefits from her reporting experience at the FT and previously Wired. It is a book of reportage, collating tales of people’s bad experiences either as part of the low-paid work force in low income countries tagging images or moderating content, or being on the receiving end of algorithmic decision-making. The common thread is the destruction of human agency and the utter absence of accountability or scope for redress when AI systems are created and deployed.

The analytical framework is the idea of data colonialism, the extraction of information from individuals for its use in ways that never benefit them. The book is not entirely negative about AI and sees the possibilities. One example is the use of AI on a large sample of knee-xrays looking for osteo-arthritis. The puzzle being tackled by the researcher concerned was that African American patients consistently reported greater pain than patients of European extraction when their X rays looked exactly the same to the human radiologists. The solution turned out to be that the X rays were scored against a scale developed in mid-20th century Manchester on white, male patients. When the researcher, Ziad Obermeyer, fed a database of X-ray images to an AI algorithm, his model proved a much better predictor of pain. Humans wear blinkers created by the measurement frameworks we have already constructed, whereas AI is (or can be) a blank slate.

However, this is one of the optimistic examples in the book, where AI can potentially offer a positive outcome for humans. It is outnumbered by the counter-examples – Uber drivers being shortchanged by the algorithm or falsely flagged for some misdemeanour and having no possibility of redress, women haunted by deepfake pornography, Kenyan workers traumatised by the images they need to assess for content moderation yet unable to even speak about it because of the NDAs they have to sign, data collected from powerless and poor humans to train medical apps whose use they will never be able to afford.

The book brought to life for me an abstract idea I’ve been thinking about pursuing for a while: the need to find business models and financing modes that will enable the technology to benefit everyone. The technological possibilities are there but the only prevailing models are exploitative. Who is going to find how to deploy AI for the common good? How can the use of AI models be made accountable? Because it isn’t just a matter of ‘computer says No’, but rather ‘computer doesn’t acknowledge your existence’. And behind the computers stand the rich and powerful of the tech world.

There are lots of new books about AI out or about to be published, including AI Needs You by my colleague Verity Harding (I’ll post separately). I strongly recommend both of these; and would also observe that it’s women in the forefront of pushing for AI to serve everyone.

There’s no way I can be unbiased about Verity Harding’s new book AI Needs You: How we can change AI’s future and save our own, given that it began with a workshop Verity convened and the Bennett Institute hosted in Cambridge a few years ago. The idea – quite some time before the current wave of AI hype, hope and fear – was to reflect on how previous emerging disruptive technologies had come to be governed. After some debate we settled on space, embryology, and ICANN (the internet domain naming body), as between them these seemed to echo some of the issues regarding AI.

These discussions set the scene for Verity’s research into the detailed history of governance in each of these cases, and the outcome is a fascinating book that describes each in turn and reflects on the lessons for us now. The overall message is that the governance and use of technology in the public interest, for the public good, is possible. There is no technological determinism, nor any trade-off between public benefit and private innovation. The ‘Silicon Valley’ zeitgeist of inevitability, the idea that the tech is irresistible and society’s task is to leave its management to the experts, is false.

The implication of this – and hence the book’s title – is that: “Understanding that technology – how it gets built, why, and by whom – is critical for anyone interested in the future of our society.” And hence the ‘Needs You’ in the title. How AI develops, what it is used for an how – these are political questions requiring engaged citizens. This is why the historical examples are so fascinating, revealing as they do the messy practicalities and contingency of citizen engagement, political debate, quiet lobbying, co-ordination efforts, events and sheer luck. The embryology example is a case in point: the legislation in the UK was based on the hard work of the Warnock Commission, its engagement with citizens, tireless efforts to explain science; but also on years of political debate and a key decision by Mrs Thatcher about its Parliamentary progress. The resulting legislation has since stood the test of time and also set an ethical and regulatory framework for other countries too. The lesson is that the governance of AI will not be shaped by clever people designing it, but as the outcome of political and social forces.

The book is beautifully written and a gripping read (more than you might expect for a book about regulating technology). There are quite a few new books on AI out this spring, and there are others I’ve read in proof that are also excellent; but this will definitely be one of the ones that stands the test of time. Not for nothing did Time magazine name Verity as one of the 100 most influential people in AI. She is now leading a Bennett Institute Macarthur Foundation-funded project on the geopolitics of AI. I’ll be in conversation with her at Waterstones in Cambridge on 14th March.