The Big Nine

The Big Nine How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

First trade paperback edition

Paperback (26 Mar 2020)

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Publisher's Synopsis

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 - are 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-centred 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.

Book information

ISBN: 9781541773738
Publisher: Little, Brown
Imprint: PublicAffairs
Pub date:
Edition: First trade paperback edition
DEWEY: 006.301
DEWEY edition: 23/eng/20231220
Language: English
Number of pages: 324
Weight: 288g
Height: 146mm
Width: 211mm
Spine width: 34mm