What does it mean to be human in a world that is rapidly changing thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, of automated decision-making that both draws on and influences our behaviour?
Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency – and shatter our illusion of free will.
AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small. In this compelling work, Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.
Code-Dependent is the intimate investigation of AI that we’ve been waiting for, and it arrives not a moment too soon. Murgia travels the world to bring us intimate portraits of every aspect of the human condition—inner life, family, work, class, race, geography, gender, community, politics—as each is unmade and remade by today’s global AI juggernaut. Most critically, Murgia doesn’t just ‘tell.’ She ‘shows’ us in moving detail that AI is nothing more than a spectrum of possibilities selected and shaped by the economic and political powers that bring it to life. Her work brilliantly reveals the quiet daily violence and flesh and blood consequences of today’s dominant AI regime designed and deployed by surveillance capitalism. Ultimately, the steady drumbeat of her stories opens our eyes to what could have been and what might yet become if we learn to join forces to reclaim our digital century for people and planet. -- Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus
