“I wanted [Code Dependent] to be a global book. I wanted to step away from the microcosm of Silicon Valley and look at where this technology has reached…and how that is different in say, Latin America or India or Pittsburgh or Beijing or London, and to find both the similarities and the tensions between different cultures interfacing and interacting with this technology.”
— Madhumita Murgia
“In the future, I think that’s what we need to look towards: trying to figure out the real problems that people are going to have. Not the sci-fi, scary ones, but the ways they will affect real people at the small scales, because they’ll only accelerate.”
— Armin Samii
Data and automated systems are used to describe us, evaluate us, remind us of the past, and predict our possible future(s). Sometimes it can make life easier, but in many ways the omnipresence of these systems complicates our experience of moving through the world. So how can we weave together these disparate experiences of living with automated systems and AI, and what do they reveal?
On November 14, in a conversation moderated by Data & Society Senior Researcher Ranjit Singh, Madhumita Murgia and Armin Samii discussed Murgia’s new book, Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI. Together, they explored living with data by describing their journeys into understanding it, reporting on it, and resisting it. While Murgia’s journalistic journey began with tracing the flow of her personal data sold by data brokers, Samii used his expertise as a computer scientist to build UberCheats, an algorithm auditing tool that extracts GPS coordinates from UberEats receipts to calculate the difference between the actual miles a courier traveled and those Uber claimed they did. In Code Dependent, Samii’s story is the focus of a chapter on how data-driven systems come to play the role of the boss.
Code Dependent spans stories from across the globe and calls attention to the voices of ordinary people as they navigate the everyday challenges of living with data-driven systems and work to reclaim their agency. In the process, Murgia invites a deeper reflection on these systems and how they interact with human ethics and judgment.
