Australian Walkley Award-winning journalist Tracey Spicer brings her investigative journalism skills and wicked sense of humour to explore AI’s past, present and future.
Spicer uncovers the inherent biases the way AI works, as well as in the history of AI and who controls its future. She translates the abstract notion of systemic bias into concrete stories and pitfalls (for example a soap-dispenser that fails on darker skin tones).
Spicer’s book focuses on AI, but the points she makes can equally apply to our work with conflict. To truly ensure a fair and effective process, we need to detect issues early, name them up, engage the parties and engage the system. Her book is a reminder that we must recognise systems that are built to avoid or conceal conflict rather than resolve it.
Man Made is more than a book about AI. It is a call to sharpen our conflict literacy for the 21st century, because the next front of conflict is not only human misunderstandings, but machines, data, and design decisions.