Dark Machines

This book offers a critical primer on how Artificial Intelligence and digitalization are shaping our planet and the risks posed to society and environmental sustainability. As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so too does the hope that digital and artificially intelligent technologies will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change. Technology giants, international think-tanks and policy-makers are increasingly keen to advance agendas that contribute to "AI for Good" or "AI for the Planet." Dark Machines explores why it is naïve and dangerous to assume converging forces of a growing climate crisis and technological change will act synergistically to the benefit of people and the planet. It explores why AI and associated digital technologies may lead to accelerated discrimination, automated inequality, and augmented diffusion of misinformation, while simultaneously amplifying risks for people and the planet. We face a profound challenge. We can either allow AI accelerate the loss of resilience of people and our planet, or we can decide to act forcefully in ways that redirects its destructive direction. This urgent book will be of interest to students and researchers with an interest in Artificial Intelligence, digitalization and automation, social and political dimensions of science and technology, and sustainability sciences.

Victor Galaz is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Sweden, and Program Director at the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His research explores the political and social dynamics of climate crises and systemic risks, and the influence of information technological change on a human-dominated planet. He is the author of Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: The Anthropocene Gap (2015), co-author of Biosphere Code: A Manifesto for Algorithms in the Environment (2015), and editor of Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity: Applications and Frontiers (2019).

1. Introduction to Dark Machines 2. A forever changing planet 3. Seeing the world through the eyes of intelligent machines 4. Automating our living planet 5. Capital, intelligent machines and sustainability 6. Behind the crypto-hype 7. Machine intelligent misinformation 8. Nature, emotions and machines 9. Algorithmic resistance for the planet 10. Towards planetary responsible AI