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Humanity in the Machine

Readers' Cafe

Book Jacket for The Algorithm How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now style=
Book Jacket for AI Superpowers China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order style=
Book Jacket for The Big Nine How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity style=
Book Jacket for Blood in the Machine The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech style=
Book Jacket for The Coming Wave Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma style=
Book Jacket for Digital Minimalism Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World style=
Book Jacket for Futureproof 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation style=
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Book Jacket for Human Compatible Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control style=
Book Jacket for Robot-Proof Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence style=

The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now / Hilke Schellmann

Based on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents, and real world test results, Emmy?award winning Wall Street Journal contributor Hilke Schellmann delivers a shocking and illuminating expose on the next civil rights issue of our time: how AI has already taken over the workplace and shapes our future. Hilke Schellmann, is an Emmy?award winning investigative reporter, Wall Street Journal and Guardian contributor and Journalism Professor at NYU.

In The Algorithm, she investigates the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work. AI is now being used to decide who has access to an education, who gets hired, who gets fired, and who receives a promotion. Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents and real?world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms making high?stakes decisions are biased, racist, and do more harm than good.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order / Kai-Fu Lee

Here are two well-known facts: Artificial Intelligence is reshaping the world as we know it. The United States has long been, and remains, the global leader in AI. That first fact is correct. But in his provocative new book, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee - one of the world's most respected experts on AI - reveals that China has suddenly caught up to the US at an astonishingly rapid pace.

As the US-Sino competition begins to heat up, Lee envisions China and the US forming a powerful duopoly in AI, but one that is based on each nation's unique and traditional cultural inclinations. Building upon his longstanding US-Sino technology career (working at Apple, Microsoft and Google) and his much-heralded New York Times Op-Ed from June 2017, Dr. Lee predicts that Chinese and American AI will have a stunning impact on not just traditional blue-collar industries but will also have a devastating effect on white-collar professions. Is the concept of universal basic income the solution? In Dr. Lee's opinion, probably not.

In AI Superpowers, he outlines how millions of suddenly displaced workers must find new ways to make their lives meaningful, and how government policies will have to deal with the unprecedented inequality between the "haves" and the "have-nots." Even worse, Lee says the transformation to AI is already happening all around us, whether we are aware of it or not. Dr. Lee - a native of China but educated in America - argues powerfully that these unprecedented developments will happen much sooner than we think. He cautions us about the truly dramatic upheaval that AI will unleash and how we need to start thinking now on how to address these profound changes that are coming to our world.

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity / Amy Webb

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head.We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we--the everyday people whose data powers AI--aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into--one largely free from regulation or oversight.

The big nine corporations--Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI--the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself--is broken.

Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity.Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech / BRIAN MERCHANT

The true story of what happened the first time machines came for human jobs, when an underground network of 19th century rebels, the Luddites, took up arms against the industrialists that?were automating their?work - and how it explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech today.

The most pressing story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley,?Seattle, or even Shenzhen. It begins two hundred years ago in rural England, when working men and women rose up en masse rather than starve at the hands of the factory owners who were using machines to erase and degrade their livelihoods.?

?They organized guerilla raids, smashed those machines, and embarked on full-scale assaults against the wealthy machine owners. They won the support of Lord Byron, inspired Mary Shelley, and enraged the Prince Regent and his bloodthirsty government.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma / Mustafa Suleyman

We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks - operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World / Cal Newport

The key to living well in a high tech world is to spend much less time using technology.Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport's Deep Work sparked a movement around the idea that unbroken concentration produces far more value than the electronic busyness that defines the modern work day. But his readers had an urgent follow-up question: What about technology in our personal lives?

In recent years, our culture's relationship with personal technology has transformed from something exciting into something darker. Innovations like smartphones and social media are useful, but many of us are increasingly troubled by how much control these tools seem to exert over our daily experiences--including how we spend our free time and how we feel about ourselves.

In Digital Minimalism, Newport proposes a bold solution: a minimalist approach to technology use in which you radically reduce the time you spend online, focusing on a small set of carefully-selected activities while happily ignoring the rest.He mounts a vigorous defense for this less-is-more approach, combining historical examples with case studies of modern digital minimalists to argue that this philosophy isn't a rejection of technology, but instead a necessary realignment to ensure that these tools serve us, not the other way around.

To make these principles practical, he takes us inside the growing subculture of digital minimalists who have built rich lives on a foundation of intentional technology use, and details a decluttering process that thousands have already used to simplify their online lives. He also stresses the importance of never clicking "like," explores the underappreciated value of analog hobbies, and draws lessons from the "attention underground"--a resistance movement fighting the tech companies' attempts to turn us into gadget addicts.Digital Minimalism is an indispensable guide for anyone looking to reclaim their life from the alluring diversions of the digital world.

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation / Kevin Roose

The machines are here. After decades of sci-fi fantasies and hype, A.I. and automation have leapt out of research labs and Silicon Valley engineering departments and into the center of our lives. These machines aren't just threatening jobs - they're shaping every part of our lives, from the news we see to the products we buy and the relationships we form. And while the timeless debate over whether or not robots will lead to mass unemployment rages on, a much more important question has gotten ignored: What does it mean to be a human in the age of machines? In Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose lays out a pragmatic vision of how people can thrive in the machine age by making themselves irreplaceably human.

The Heart and the Chip / Daniela Rus

Daniela Rus, a leading roboticist and computer scientist, explores how we can use a new generation of smart machines to help humankind.There is a robotics revolution underway. A record 3.1 million robots are working in factories right now, doing everything from assembling computers to packing goods and monitoring air quality and performance. A far greater number of smart machines impact our lives in countless other ways - improving the precision of surgeons, cleaning our homes, extending our reach to distant worlds - and we're on the cusp of even more exciting opportunities.

In The Heart and the Chip, roboticist Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society.

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms / HANNAH FRY

A look inside the algorithms that are shaping our lives and the dilemmas they bring with them.If you were accused of a crime, who would you rather decide your sentence -- a mathematically consistent algorithm incapable of empathy or a compassionate human judge prone to bias and error? What if you want to buy a driverless car and must choose between one programmed to save as many lives as possible and another that prioritizes the lives of its own passengers? And would you agree to share your family's full medical history if you were told that it would help researchers find a cure for cancer?

These are just some of the dilemmas that we are beginning to face as we approach the age of the algorithm, when it feels as if the machines reign supreme. Already, these lines of code are telling us what to watch, where to go, whom to date, and even whom to send to jail. But as we rely on algorithms to automate big, important decisions -- in crime, justice, healthcare, transportation, and money -- they raise questions about what we want our world to look like.

What matters most: Helping doctors with diagnosis or preserving privacy? Protecting victims of crime or preventing innocent people being falsely accused?

Hello World takes us on a tour through the good, the bad, and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us on a daily basis. Mathematician Hannah Fry reveals their inner workings, showing us how algorithms are written and implemented, and demonstrates the ways in which human bias can literally be written into the code.

By weaving in relatable, real world stories with accessible explanations of the underlying mathematics that power algorithms, Hello World helps us to determine their power, expose their limitations, and examine whether they really are improvement on the human systems they replace.

How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms / GERD GIGERENZER

How to stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms that beat us in chess, find us romantic partners, and tell us to "turn right in 500 yards."Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacing people with software might make the world a better place - while tech industry critics warn darkly about surveillance capitalism. Despite their differing views of the future, they all agree: machines will soon do everything better than humans. In How to Stay Smart in a Smart World, Gerd Gigerenzer shows why that's not true, and tells us how we can stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms. Machines powered by artificial intelligence are good at some things (playing chess) , but not others (life-and-death decisions, or anything involving uncertainty) .

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control / Stuart J Russell

A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines.In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself.

Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable.In this groundbreaking audiobook, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage.If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves.

How can we ensure they never, ever, have power over us? Russell suggests that we can rebuild AI on a new foundation, according to which machines are designed to be inherently uncertain about the human preferences they are required to satisfy. Such machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursue our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.

Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence / Joseph Aoun

How to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover -- filling needs that even the most sophisticated robot cannot.Driverless cars are hitting the road, powered by artificial intelligence. Robots can climb stairs, open door


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Facebook Instagram LinkedIn You Tube

Poudre River Public Library District
(970) 221-6740

Including the collection of
Front Range Community College, Larimer Campus