The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil: “The digital has emerged as a driving force of change that is reshaping everyday life and affecting nearly every sphere of vital activity. Yet, its impact has been far from uniform. The multifaceted implications of these ongoing shifts differ markedly across the world, demanding a nuanced understanding of specific manifestations and local experiences of the digital.

In The Digital Double Bind, Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil explore how the Middle East’s digital turn intersects with complex political, economic, and socio-cultural dynamics. Drawing on local research and rich case studies, they show how the same forces that brought promises of change through digital transformation have also engendered tensions and contradictions. The authors contend that the ensuing disjunctures have ensnared the region in a double bind, which represents the salient feature of an unfolding digital turn. The same conditions that drive the state, market, and public immersion in the digital also inhibit the region’s drive to change.

The Digital Double Bind reconsiders the question of technology and change, moving beyond binary formulations and familiar trajectories of the network society. It offers a path-breaking analysis of change and stasis in the Middle East and provides a roadmap for a critical engagement with digitality in the Global South…(More)”.

Handbook of Artificial Intelligence at Work

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Martha Garcia-Murillo and Andrea Renda: “With the advancement in processing power and storage now enabling algorithms to expand their capabilities beyond their initial narrow applications, technology is becoming increasingly powerful. This highly topical Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on work, assessing its effect on an array of economic sectors, the resulting nature of work, and the subsequent policy implications of these changes.

Featuring contributions from leading experts across diverse fields, the Handbook of Artificial Intelligence at Work takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding AI’s connections to existing economic, social, and political ecosystems. Considering a range of fields including agriculture, manufacturing, health care, education, law and government, the Handbook provides detailed sector-specific analyses of how AI is changing the nature of work, the challenges it presents and the opportunities it creates. Looking forward, it makes policy recommendations to address concerns, such as the potential displacement of some human labor by AI and growth in inequality affecting those lacking the necessary skills to interact with these technologies or without opportunities to do so.

This vital Handbook is an essential read for students and academics in the fields of business and management, information technology, AI, and public policy. It will also be highly informative from a cross-disciplinary perspective for practitioners, as well as policy makers with an interest in the development of AI technology…(More)”

Not the End of the World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Hannah Ritchie: “It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children.

But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history. Did you know that: 

  • Carbon emissions per capita are actually down
  • Deforestation peaked back in the 1980s
  • The air we breathe now is vastly improved from centuries ago
  • And more people died from natural disasters a hundred years ago?

Packed with the latest research, practical guidance, and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you’ve been told about the environment. Not the End of the World will give you the tools to understand our current crisis and make lifestyle changes that actually have an impact. Hannah cuts through the noise by outlining what works, what doesn’t, and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.      

These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let’s turn that opportunity into reality…(More)”.

AI for Good: Applications in Sustainability, Humanitarian Action, and Health

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Juan M. Lavista Ferres, and William B. Weeks: “…delivers an insightful and fascinating discussion of how one of the world’s most recognizable software companies is tackling intractable social problems with the power of artificial intelligence (AI). In the book, you’ll see real in-the-field examples of researchers using AI with replicable methods and reusable AI code to inspire your own uses.

The authors also provide:

  • Easy-to-follow, non-technical explanations of what AI is and how it works
  • Examples of the use of AI for scientists working on mitigating climate change, showing how AI can better analyze data without human bias, remedy pattern recognition deficits, and make use of satellite and other data on a scale never seen before so policy makers can make informed decisions
  • Real applications of AI in humanitarian action, whether in speeding disaster relief with more accurate data for first responders or in helping address populations that have experienced adversity with examples of how analytics is being used to promote inclusivity
  • A deep focus on AI in healthcare where it is improving provider productivity and patient experience, reducing per-capita healthcare costs, and increasing care access, equity, and outcomes
  • Discussions of the future of AI in the realm of social benefit organizations and efforts…(More)”

Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Anil Ananthaswamy: “Machine-learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumour is cancerous, or deciding whether someone gets bail. They now influence discoveries in chemistry, biology and physics – the study of genomes, extra-solar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems.

We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. This major shift is based on simple mathematics, some of which goes back centuries: linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of eighteenth-century mathematics. Indeed by the mid-1850s, a lot of the groundwork was all done. It took the development of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see all around us today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggests that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules…(More)”.

Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Nathan Schneider: “When was the last time you participated in an election for a Facebook group or sat on a jury for a dispute in a subreddit? Platforms nudge users to tolerate nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and “benevolent dictators for life.” In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online spaces themselves, as feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities’ democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. But online spaces could be sites of a creative, radical, and democratic renaissance. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider shows how the internet can learn from governance legacies of the past to become a more democratic medium, responsive and inventive unlike anything that has come before…(More)”.

The Value of Values

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Daniel Aronson: “Acting on values—doing good for the benefit of all—can substantially benefit the bottom line, but many business leaders mistakenly believe that doing the right thing lowers profits. This belief is the greatest barrier holding businesses back from being more financially and competitively successful—and delivering more good for the world. Not only can it be a winning business strategy to act on values, as Daniel Aronson suggests in The Value of Values, but it is also a savvy choice, increasing a company’s power, profit, and competitive advantage—in many cases with little additional investment or risk.

It starts with seeing what others miss. Using extensive research and real-world calculations, Aronson demonstrates that the “submerged value” of initiatives such as taking bold action to combat climate change, helping people find jobs, or creating an open, inclusive work environment is normally 4 to 10 times more than initially believed. Calculating and capturing the true business benefit of acting on values provides a much-needed update to the sustainability and responsibility playbook. Even more important, it shows executives how to harness the value of values to improve profitability, acquire customers, and turbocharge their own careers…(More)”.

In the long run: the future as a political idea

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jonathan White: “Democracy is future-oriented and self-correcting: today’s problems can be solved, we are told, in tomorrow’s elections. But the biggest issues facing the modern world – from climate collapse and pandemics to recession and world war – each apparently bring us to the edge of the irreversible. What happens to democracy when the future seems no longer open?

In this eye-opening history of ideas, Jonathan White investigates how politics has long been directed by shifting visions of the future, from the birth of ideologies in the nineteenth century to Cold War secrecy and the excesses of the neoliberal age.

As an inescapable sense of disaster defines our politics, White argues that a political commitment to the long-term may be the best way to safeguard democracy. Wide in scope and sharply observed, In the Long Run is a history of the future that urges us to make tomorrow new again…(More)”.

Guardrails: Guiding Human Decisions in the Age of AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Urs Gasser and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: “When we make decisions, our thinking is informed by societal norms, “guardrails” that guide our decisions, like the laws and rules that govern us. But what are good guardrails in today’s world of overwhelming information flows and increasingly powerful technologies, such as artificial intelligence? Based on the latest insights from the cognitive sciences, economics, and public policy, Guardrails offers a novel approach to shaping decisions by embracing human agency in its social context.

In this visionary book, Urs Gasser and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger show how the quick embrace of technological solutions can lead to results we don’t always want, and they explain how society itself can provide guardrails more suited to the digital age, ones that empower individual choice while accounting for the social good, encourage flexibility in the face of changing circumstances, and ultimately help us to make better decisions as we tackle the most daunting problems of our times, such as global injustice and climate change.

Whether we change jobs, buy a house, or quit smoking, thousands of decisions large and small shape our daily lives. Decisions drive our economies, seal the fate of democracies, create war or peace, and affect the well-being of our planet. Guardrails challenges the notion that technology should step in where our own decision making fails, laying out a surprisingly human-centered set of principles that can create new spaces for better decisions and a more equitable and prosperous society…(More)”.

Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Georgina Voss: “…explores how we experience complex systems: the mesh of things, people, and ideas interacting to produce their own patterns and behaviours.

What does it mean when a car which runs on code drives dangerously? What does massmarket graphics software tell us about the workplace politics of architects? And, in these human-made systems, which phenomena are designed, and which are emergent? In a world of networked technologies, global supply chains, and supranational regulations, there are growing calls for a new kind of literacy around systems and their ramifications. At the same time, we are often told these systems are impossible to fully comprehend and are far beyond our control.

Drawing on field research and artistic practice around the industrial settings of ports, air traffic control, architectural software, payment platforms in adult entertainment, and car crash testing, Georgina Voss argues that complex systems can be approached as sites of revelation around scale, time, materiality, deviance, and breakages. With humour and guile, she tells the story of what ‘systems’ have come to mean, how they have been sold to us, and the real-world consequences of the power that flows through them.

Systems Ultra goes beyond narratives of technological exceptionalism to explore how we experience the complex systems which influence our lives, how to understand them more clearly, and, perhaps, how to change them…(More)”.