We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed
by technology as we do by laws and regulations. Frighteningly often, the
influence of technology in and on our lives goes completely unchallenged
by citizens and governments. We comfort ourselves with the soothing
refrain that technology has no morals and can display no prejudice, and
it's only the users of technology who distort certain aspects of it.
But is this statement actually true? Dr Robert Smith thinks it is
dangerously untrue in the modern era.
Having worked in the field of artificial intelligence for over 30 years,
Smith reveals the mounting evidence that the mechanical actors in our
lives do indeed have, or at least express, morals: they're just not the
morals of the progressive modern society that we imagined we were moving
towards. Instead, as we are just beginning to see - in the US elections
and Brexit to name but a few - there are increasing incidences of
machine bigotry, greed and the crass manipulation of our basest
instincts.
It is easy to assume that these are the result of programmer prejudices
or the product of dark forces manipulating the masses through the
network of the Internet. But what if there is something more fundamental
and explicitly mechanical at play, something inherent within technology
itself?
This book demonstrates how non-scientific ideas have been encoded deep
into our technological infrastructure. Offering a rigorous, fresh
perspective on how technology has brought us to this place, Rage Inside
the Machine challenges the long-held assumption that technology is an
apolitical and amoral force. Shedding light on little-known historical
stories and investigating the complex connections between scientific
philosophy, institutional prejudice and new technology, this book offers
a new, honest and more truly scientific vision of ourselves.
