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.
