Code Dependent

Living in the Shadow of AI

By: Madhumita Murgia

Narrated by: Madhumita Murgia

Long-listed, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, 2024

This program is read by the author and includes a bonus interview with the author.

“Engaging and entertaining, this work is essential listening for anyone following the potentially explosive development of AI.”—AudioFile

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction

A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making

On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community.

AI has already infiltrated our day-to-day, through language-generating chatbots like ChatGPT and social media. But it’s also affecting us in more insidious ways. It touches everything from our interpersonal relationships, to our kids’ education, work, finances, public services, and even our human rights.

By highlighting the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from the cozy enclave of Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often-exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Murgia exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency, and shatter our illusion of free will.

The ways in which algorithms and their effects are governed over the coming years will profoundly impact us all. Yet we can’t agree on a common path forward. We cannot decide what preferences and morals we want to encode in these entities—or what controls we may want to impose on them. And thus, we are collectively relinquishing our moral authority to machines.

In Code Dependent, Murgia not only sheds light on this chilling phenomenon, but also charts a path of resistance. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small, and Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Madhumita Murgia (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Code Dependent is the intimate investigation of AI that we’ve been waiting for, and it arrives not a moment too soon. Murgia travels the world to bring us intimate portraits of every aspect of the human condition—inner life, family, work, class, race, geography, gender, community, politics—as each is unmade and remade by today’s global AI juggernaut. Most critically, Murgia doesn’t just ‘tell.’ She ‘shows’ us in moving detail that AI is nothing more than a spectrum of possibilities selected and shaped by the economic and political powers that bring it to life. Her work brilliantly reveals the quiet daily violence and flesh and blood consequences of today’s dominant AI regime designed and deployed by surveillance capitalism. Ultimately, the steady drumbeat of her stories opens our eyes to what could have been and what might yet become if we learn to join forces to reclaim our digital century for people and planet.”—Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus

"Brilliant storytelling. Books about AI often put the tech centre stage, but Murgia makes you, the human, the hero and sadly often the victim in this fascinating collection of stories about the impact of code on our future."—Marcus du Sautoy, author of The Creativity Code

"With its compelling narrative, Code Dependent is a testament to the power of storytelling in unraveling the complexities of AI. Murgia's profound insights and meticulous research offer a rare and invaluable perspective on the intersection of technology and society."—Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View

AI and ethical impact

I like her stories of real people. I definitely learned a lot more about ethical concerns as well as technology advancements.

Very interesting - but a FAR left-leaning book

I was very excited to get this book - especially the format being based in not only research but also real-life stories which I enjoy. However, I'm halfway through the book and beginning to struggle in finishing it. Firstly, I want to emphasize this that is obviously well researched, well written and the author has a lot of passion in this area.

Now the downside. In each of the topics covered by the author, she underscores over and over her believe about under privileged or underrepresented people receiving the most significant short end of the stick with AI technology. At this point, at halfway through the book, I'm starting to get worn out on this angle mainly because there's no balancing point. The leftist party line seems to be these days that somehow those who hold power are in the wrong and everyone everywhere should have influence and equality and benefit from a company's success no matter what they do. Although a nice ideal, it will take the world time to get there. The AI data framers in these at-risk parts of the world seem very grateful to have the privilege of having a good paying (for their part of the world) job that provides flexibility and good working conditions. To expect that these entry level workers should make similar money to those in the U.S. or have the ability to influence the AI industry I think is a little ridiculous. Entry level workers in the U.S. don't have such influence - every employee doesn't have the right to influence their company. These AI data workers are entry level workers, with no previous knowledge of how to use a computer, who receive a 6-month free training program and begin to make a pretty good wage off the streets. It seemed to me the author worked hard to fish for dissatisfaction in the workers she interviewed so she could underscore her believe they are being taken advantage of and are entitled to more. It wasn't very convincing to me. Most people don't love their jobs, and most people don't feel they have influence in their companies unless they are in an upper management position. Should these uneducated data workers have influence just because they are in the AI industry? I don't really understand that.

The author then goes on to complain, though cleverly so, about how diagnoses from AI based programs lag behind in identifying illnesses in minorities. Well, you have to start with a patient base somewhere, don't you? And it probably is going to be at ground zero wherever the technology was developed. And it is being updated and improved as it is developed to be more comprehensive. AI is a very young technology. Again, I feel like the author really was reaching hard to make her point of victimizing minorities. Also, wanting and even expecting these technologies should be readily available for free in poor countries...while I certainly understand the ideal...who is supposed to foot the bill? All of this costs a lot of money. If you take away from the monetary incentive - these technologies won't be developed or at least not nearly at the pace they are now. Progress cannot be expected overnight - but it seems to me that is the expectation here because of how helpful the technology would be. Perhaps she should be petitioning these countries governments to contribute rather than inferring the industry is the problem.

I think this book could have been really amazing with a more balanced perspective. There is a lot of interesting information about this blossoming industry, and it is well written. But I'm not sure I'll finish reading it as I'm a bit weary of the over emphasizing of the victimization of the underprivileged left-leaning angle. There's a lot more going on in AI that is of concern, and it will impact us all - no matter what our race or station.

very left wing

I made it 3 chapters in and I feel less intelligent now, too much about feelings and not nearly enough about ai