Hi ,
With Christmas and the holidays just around the corner, everyone seems to be sharing their book recommendations
for the year. I wanted to get in on the act, so without further do, here are my recommendations for data scientists in need of a break from staring at a computer screen all day.
Non-Fiction: Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI by Toby Walsh
AI has become so ubiquitous in our everyday lives that we no longer notice it - until something goes wrong. But as the Robodebt scandal showed, when it does go wrong, it can go very wrong.
Author Toby Walsh is a world-leading researcher in AI, but this primer on AI ethics, fairness, privacy and morality reads more like an airport bestseller than a textbook. Walsh draws on a range of recent case studies, from around the world, while speculating on the future directions AI could take.
Much like a person who turns vegetarian after learning the consequences of ordering a steak, reading this book made me seriously reconsider my position on the use and regulation of various AI-driven technologies - especially facial recognition.
This book should be required reading for anyone considering a career in technology.
Fiction: The Every by Dave Eggers
Imagine a future where the world's largest tech companies didn't just monitor your every move, they used the resulting data to replace free will altogether.
Set in the not-too-distant future, The
Every (sub-titled "Limitless Choice is Killing the World") speculates what it might look like if a digital monopoly (called 'the Every'), that's one part Amazon, one part Google and one part Facebook, ruled the world. It centres on a young woman who goes to work for the Every, intending to save humanity by destroying it down from within. But do people really want to be saved?
For me, the real fun came from reading of the various new technologies coming out of the Every - many of which seemed as plausible as those described by Toby Walsh in Machines Behaving Badly. Published in 2021 and intended as a satire, at times it felt like this book was already coming true - especially with the launch of ChatGPT.
The Every is a follow-up to Eggers' 2013 novel, The Circle, a thriller about a social media giant intent on remaking the world in its own image, but functions as both a sequel and as a stand-alone "equal" in its own right.
If Only It Were Fiction: Disrupted by Dan Lyons
What if a 52 year old former tech journalist went to work for a tech start-up where the average age is just 26 and where the CEO's idea of innovative
leadership involves bringing a teddy bear along to meetings?
Written by Dan Lyons, who later went on to write for the TV show Silicon Valley, Disrupted is an autobiographical account of Lyons' own time at HubSpot. It serves as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong in both the tech industry
and in modern workplaces in general, and will make you seriously reconsider any thoughts you might have of ever working for a start-up.
When I read this book, I found myself reading huge passages aloud to family and friends. Simultaneously laugh-aloud funny and stomach-churningly frightening, it's
basically an account of what it's like to work at a kindergarten for adults, where the "kids" are running the show. Your own workplace will (hopefully) seem good by comparison.
