| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 218 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Introduction : Politics and Ethics in the Age of Algorithms -- Part 1. Condensation -- The Cloud Chambers: Condensed Data and Correlative Reason -- The Learning Machines: Neural Networks and Regimes of Recognition -- Part 2. Attribution -- The Uncertain Author: Writing and Attribution -- The Madness of Algorithms: Aberration and Unreasonable Acts -- Part 3. Ethics -- The Doubtful Algorithm: Ground Truth and Partial Accounts -- The Unattributable: Strategies for a Cloud Ethics |
| Summary |
"CLOUD ETHICS focuses on the ethical dimensions and political impact of algorithmic decision-making and cloud computing. Algorithms have become pervasive in supplying solutions for state decision-making and risk management, from border and immigration control, to drone strikes, to the criminal justice system. Acknowledging that algorithms are inherently opaque and illegible, Amoore argues that we can neither encode ethics into the operations of algorithms nor hold algorithms themselves responsible for their actions in the world. Instead, we must exercise this ethical responsibility through our engagement with the conditions under which algorithms emerge. Amoore proposes a "cloud ethics" that can analyze the ethico-politics of the algorithms as they formulate and modify themselves through interactions with data. First, Amoore considers the political character of cloud computing. She contrasts understandings of cloud forms-the identification and spatial location of the data centers where the cloud is thought to materialize, which spark questions like "where is the cloud?"--With cloud analytics, which see the cloud as an analytical gathering of algorithms with data. The machine learning of surgical robotics serves as an example of why algorithms cannot be considered either good or evil: these robots can perform precise surgeries to save lives, but they also potentially endanger lives through error and miscalculation. Responding to public concerns that algorithms can act in a way that is irrational or mad, Amoore argues that algorithms depend more on the act of incorporating data than on the source code itself-and often when algorithms appear to act in a way that's mad, they are exhibiting qualities of their own rationality. Finally, Amoore puts forward her vision of a critical cloud ethics, encouraging scholars to play with the arrangements, thresholds, and assumptions of algorithms to give doubtful accounts of algorithms, which accept potential incoherence instead of holding out for the promise of a particular claim to truth. CLOUD ETHICS will interest scholars in geography, media studies, science and technology studies, history of science and history of computing, and critical theory"-- Provided by publisher |
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"In Cloud Ethics Louise Amoore examines how machine learning algorithms are transforming the ethics and politics of contemporary society. Conceptualizing algorithms as ethicopolitical entities that are entangled with the data attributes of people, Amoore outlines how algorithms give incomplete accounts of themselves, learn through relationships with human practices, and exist in the world in ways that exceed their source code. In these ways, algorithms and their relations to people cannot be understood by simply examining their code, nor can ethics be encoded into algorithms. Instead, Amoore locates the ethical responsibility of algorithms in the conditions of partiality and opacity that haunt both human and algorithmic decisions. To this end, she proposes what she calls cloud ethics-an approach to holding algorithms accountable by engaging with the social and technical conditions under which they emerge and operate."-- Provided by publisher |
| Analysis |
algorhythmic thinking |
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machine learning |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed |
| Subject |
Cloud computing -- Moral and ethical aspects
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Decision making -- Moral and ethical aspects.
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Algorithms -- Moral and ethical aspects
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Human Geography.
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Decision making -- Moral and ethical aspects
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
2019033258 |
| ISBN |
9781478009276 |
|
1478009276 |
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