This book draws on my experience as a feminist and as a data and privacy leader, and on my many years in politics, working with governments, corporations, international organizations, coders, and policymakers about data, privacy and artificial intelligence (AI).
I have concluded that technological solutions will not address the urgent challenges that AI and big data are bringing to our world.
As a feminist, I feel the need to challenge the myth of ‘data neutrality’ and to interrogate the gendered power dynamics that underpin the AI debate. Data is a form of capital, and it behaves as such, replicating the dynamics and inequalities of capitalism. Data collection is in itself an act of choice and, this book will argue, of violence.
As a privacy leader, I see the concept of privacy as a collective good being undermined. Our lives are being invaded by AI-driven algorithms, which increasingly drive our decisions, our desires and our political opinions. We are losing both our spontaneous human individuality and our sense of community as news and information become increasingly atomized experiences.
As a politician, I know that as AI systems are increasingly endowed with agency, and algorithms are progressively replacing policy-making, we will need to ask fundamental questions about what purpose this is serving.
Along the way, I will ask why we don’t have an anti-AI movement like we have had an anti-nuclear movement. Without controls, oversight and international law, AI will be just as dangerous, and perhaps more so.
I must stress that this is not an anti-technology book – this is a book about technology and politics. I want people to understand that technology is not neutral. Technology is behind so much of the polarization and atomization of public life today, and technology itself won’t fix this. Only politics will.