And sometimes they write about the great men of AI, but that’s really all we’ve had in terms of really contending with what artificial intelligence is. Why did you choose to do this book project, and what does it mean to you?Ĭrawford: So many of the books that have been written about artificial intelligence really just talk about very narrow technical achievements. Seen through this lens, AI can no longer be considered an objective or neutral technology. ![]() ![]() They impose a social order, naturalize hierarchies, and magnify inequalities. These classifications are far from objective, she argues. Crawford draws parallels between Morton’s work and the modern AI systems that continue to classify the world into fixed categories. The skulls were collected by Samuel Morton, a 19th-century American craniologist, who believed it was possible to “objectively” divide them by their physical measurements into the five “races” of the world: African, Native American, Caucasian, Malay, and Mongolian. To explain the history of the field’s obsession with classification, she visits the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, where she stares at rows and rows of human skulls. In chapter four, for example, Crawford takes us on another trip-this one through time rather than space. A fine survival documenting the fraught U.S.-Chinese relations of another age.By grounding her analysis in such physical investigations, Crawford disposes of the euphemistic framing that artificial intelligence is simply efficient software running in “the cloud.” Her close-up, vivid descriptions of the earth and labor AI is built on, and the deeply problematic histories behind it, make it impossible to continue speaking about the technology purely in the abstract. A prefixed letter-sized typescript advises readers that the atlas is not intended foremost to convey topographical information, but rather "to aid research workers faced with problems of interpreting current information on Communist China in the light of its complex administrational structure", and requests recipients who find it "does not serve their needs" to return it ("because of the expense involved in the production of the atlas and the limited size of the edition") to the CIA's Record Center at the old CIA Headquarters in the E Street complex of Washington, DC.Ī very light waterstain to the upper edge throughout insignificant wrinkling, more pronounced in upper cover, which also shows light scuff marks and tiny loss to the lower right corner. ![]() Maps, captions, and index are carefully coordinated by the editors, including tables of comparative keys to the Wade-Giles, Yale, and the then-new Pinyin romanization system as well as of the standard abbreviations of Chinese characters. The accompanying marginal lists are based on the '1957 Handbook of Administrative Subdivisions of the PRC' (Chung-hua jenmin kung-ho-kuo hsing-cheng ch’ü-hua chien-ts’e) which lists and indexes all administrative units at the hsien level and above as of 1 January 1957". Curiously, the 25 provincial maps are larger-scale reproductions from a 1956 Communist Chinese school atlas, the pocket-size "Chung-kuo fen-sheng ti-t’u" ("Provincial Atlas of a China"), with additional Agency annotations, while the "maps give place names, hsien (county) seats, and some hydrography and roads. As the editors write in their introduction, the "catastrophic overhaul now in progress requires that the atlas be provisional in content and economical in format". The names of counties, districts, and municipalities are listed in the margin of each provincial map in Chinese and English. ![]() analysts with "fuller information on Communist adminstrative units" and to aid their interpretation of data emanating from the PRC, of "its statistical reporting, and the complexity of the administrative structure". Rare CIA-produced atlas of the People's Republic a decade after the "loss of China", at the onset of the country's "Great Leap Forward". Your personal data will be used to support your experience throughout this website, to manage access to your account, and for other purposes described in our privacy policy.
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