Spies, Lies, and Algorithms

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms PDF

Author: Amy B. Zegart

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-02

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0691147132

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Intelligence challenges in the digital age : Cloaks, daggers, and tweets -- The education crisis : How fictional spies are shaping public opinion and intelligence policy -- American intelligence history at a glance-from fake bakeries to armed drones -- Intelligence basics : Knowns and unknowns -- Why analysis is so hard : The seven deadly biases -- Counterintelligence : To catch a spy -- Covert action - "a hard business of agonizing choices" -- Congressional oversight : Eyes on spies -- Intelligence isn't just for governments anymore : Nuclear sleuthing in a Google earth world -- Decoding cyber threats.

What Algorithms Want

What Algorithms Want PDF

Author: Ed Finn

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-03-10

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0262035928

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The gap between theoretical ideas and messy reality, as seen in Neal Stephenson, Adam Smith, and Star Trek. We depend on—we believe in—algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations—the marriage vow, the shaman's curse—do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical thinking. In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm—in practical terms, “a method for solving a problem”—has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking. Finn argues that the algorithm deploys concepts from the idealized space of computation in a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to Diderot's Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, Finn explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. He examines the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost's satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. He describes Google's goal of anticipating our questions, Uber's cartoon maps and black box accounting, and what Facebook tells us about programmable value, among other things. If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, Finn argues, we need to build a model of “algorithmic reading” and scholarship that attends to process, spearheading a new experimental humanities.

Language and the Rise of the Algorithm

Language and the Rise of the Algorithm PDF

Author: Jeffrey M. Binder

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-12-06

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0226822540

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A wide-ranging history of the algorithm. Bringing together the histories of mathematics, computer science, and linguistic thought, Language and the Rise of the Algorithm reveals how recent developments in artificial intelligence are reopening an issue that troubled mathematicians well before the computer age: How do you draw the line between computational rules and the complexities of making systems comprehensible to people? By attending to this question, we come to see that the modern idea of the algorithm is implicated in a long history of attempts to maintain a disciplinary boundary separating technical knowledge from the languages people speak day to day. Here Jeffrey M. Binder offers a compelling tour of four visions of universal computation that addressed this issue in very different ways: G. W. Leibniz’s calculus ratiocinator; a universal algebra scheme Nicolas de Condorcet designed during the French Revolution; George Boole’s nineteenth-century logic system; and the early programming language ALGOL, short for algorithmic language. These episodes show that symbolic computation has repeatedly become entangled in debates about the nature of communication. Machine learning, in its increasing dependence on words, erodes the line between technical and everyday language, revealing the urgent stakes underlying this boundary. The idea of the algorithm is a levee holding back the social complexity of language, and it is about to break. This book is about the flood that inspired its construction.

A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence

A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence PDF

Author: Kartik Hosanagar

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0525560904

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A Wharton professor and tech entrepreneur examines how algorithms and artificial intelligence are starting to run every aspect of our lives, and how we can shape the way they impact us Through the technology embedded in almost every major tech platform and every web-enabled device, algorithms and the artificial intelligence that underlies them make a staggering number of everyday decisions for us, from what products we buy, to where we decide to eat, to how we consume our news, to whom we date, and how we find a job. We've even delegated life-and-death decisions to algorithms--decisions once made by doctors, pilots, and judges. In his new book, Kartik Hosanagar surveys the brave new world of algorithmic decision-making and reveals the potentially dangerous biases they can give rise to as they increasingly run our lives. He makes the compelling case that we need to arm ourselves with a better, deeper, more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of algorithmic thinking. And he gives us a route in, pointing out that algorithms often think a lot like their creators--that is, like you and me. Hosanagar draws on his experiences designing algorithms professionally--as well as on history, computer science, and psychology--to explore how algorithms work and why they occasionally go rogue, what drives our trust in them, and the many ramifications of algorithmic decision-making. He examines episodes like Microsoft's chatbot Tay, which was designed to converse on social media like a teenage girl, but instead turned sexist and racist; the fatal accidents of self-driving cars; and even our own common, and often frustrating, experiences on services like Netflix and Amazon. A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence is an entertaining and provocative look at one of the most important developments of our time and a practical user's guide to this first wave of practical artificial intelligence.

Algorithms and the End of Politics

Algorithms and the End of Politics PDF

Author: Timcke, Scott

Publisher: Bristol University Press

Published: 2021-02-15

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1529215315

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

As the US contends with issues of populism and de-democratization, this timely study considers the impacts of digital technologies on the country’s politics and society. Timcke provides a Marxist analysis of the rise of digital media, social networks and technology giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. He looks at the impact of these new platforms and technologies on their users who have made them among the most valuable firms in the world. Offering bold new thinking across data politics and digital and economic sociology, this is a powerful demonstration of how algorithms have come to shape everyday life and political legitimacy in the US and beyond.

Automate This

Automate This PDF

Author: Christopher Steiner

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-08-30

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1101572159

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The rousing story of the last gasp of human agency and how today’s best and brightest minds are endeavoring to put an end to it. It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills—and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These “bots” started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected. In this fascinating, frightening book, Christopher Steiner tells the story of how algorithms took over—and shows why the “bot revolution” is about to spill into every aspect of our lives, often silently, without our knowledge. The May 2010 “Flash Crash” exposed Wall Street’s reliance on trading bots to the tune of a 998-point market drop and $1 trillion in vanished market value. But that was just the beginning. In Automate This, we meet bots that are driving cars, penning haiku, and writing music mistaken for Bach’s. They listen in on our customer service calls and figure out what Iran would do in the event of a nuclear standoff. There are algorithms that can pick out the most cohesive crew of astronauts for a space mission or identify the next Jeremy Lin. Some can even ingest statistics from baseball games and spit out pitch-perfect sports journalism indistinguishable from that produced by humans. The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? What hap­pens to businesses when we automate judgment and eliminate human instinct? And what role will be left for doctors, lawyers, writers, truck drivers, and many others? Who knows—maybe there’s a bot learning to do your job this minute.

Algorithmic Life

Algorithmic Life PDF

Author: Louise Amoore

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1317527372

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book critically explores forms and techniques of calculation that emerge with digital computation, and their implications. The contributors demonstrate that digital calculative devices matter beyond their specific functions as they progressively shape, transform and govern all areas of our life. In particular, it addresses such questions as: How does the drive to make sense of, and productively use, large amounts of diverse data, inform the development of new calculative devices, logics and techniques? How do these devices, logics and techniques affect our capacity to decide and to act? How do mundane elements of our physical and virtual existence become data to be analysed and rearranged in complex ensembles of people and things? In what ways are conventional notions of public and private, individual and population, certainty and probability, rule and exception transformed and what are the consequences? How does the search for ‘hidden’ connections and patterns change our understanding of social relations and associative life? Do contemporary modes of calculation produce new thresholds of calculability and computability, allowing for the improbable or the merely possible to be embraced and acted upon? As contemporary approaches to governing uncertain futures seek to anticipate future events, how are calculation and decision engaged anew? Drawing together different strands of cutting-edge research that is both theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this book makes an important contribution to several areas of scholarship, including the emerging social science field of software studies, and will be a vital resource for students and scholars alike.

The Economy of Algorithms

The Economy of Algorithms PDF

Author: Marek Kowalkiewicz

Publisher: Policy Press

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1529242460

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Welcome to the economy of algorithms. It’s here and it’s growing. In the past few years, we have been flooded with examples of impressive technology. Algorithms have been around for hundreds of years, but they have only recently begun to ‘escape’ our understanding. When algorithms perform certain tasks, they’re not just as good as us, they’re becoming infinitely better, and, at the same time, massively more surprising. We are so impressed by what they can do that we give them a lot of agency. But because they are so hard to comprehend, this leads to all kinds of unintended consequences. In the 20th century, things were simple: we had the economy of corporations. In the first two decades of the 21st century, we saw the emergence of the economy of people, otherwise known as the digital economy, enabled by the internet. Now we’re seeing a new economy take shape: the economy of algorithms.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes