Predatory AI - by Nick Couldry (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

We are told that AI is inevitable, a revolutionary next stage in planetary intelligence. The calculative power that Big Tech is harnessing via its AI products cannot be doubted. But what if humanity is entering into the wrong social contract with AI?

A good future for humanity cannot mean inputting our lives into predatory AI models whose terms we don't control. It cannot mean trading away our own cognitive resources - and the power to define the future direction of the human mind - to corporations. It cannot mean ever greater cognitive dependence on business products, while ignoring the implications for environmental sustainability.

A good future with AI must mean putting social, community and planetary values first. This book imagines a different social contract with AI, and a different future. It presents clearly the social damage currently being done at work, and particularly the education and creative sectors, by accepting the wrong social contract with AI. And it debunks the philosophical prejudices that block us from valuing our own human cognitive resources.

In this second book of his trilogy, Humanising the Future, Nick Couldry argues that the time to renegotiate our contract with AI is now. This book opens a path to doing so.

Review Quotes

"As we stand at the threshold of a revolution of the human condition, Nick Couldry opens our eyes. He shows how AI, guided by commercial interest, occupies the most important space we inhabit: the space of reasoning. His powerful plea for a new social contract with and about AI requires us to develop a public-minded perspective on these new technologies. A masterful achievement that could not be more timely."
Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt

"Nick Couldry's Predatory AI is a courageous and lucid intervention in one of the most important debates of our time. His central concept of the 'wrong social contract' with AI sharpens our analytical vocabulary at precisely the moment we need it most. Predatory AI makes the case, with clarity and force, that resisting corporate capture of intelligence is not a technical but a fundamentally political and social task - one that requires, urgently, a different social imaginary, one that places embodied intelligence and the quality of collective life at its centre. This is a necessary, urgent and bracing book that feminist and critical scholars cannot afford to ignore."
Leopoldina Fortunati, author of The Arcana of Reproduction

"Couldry cuts right to the chase of our problems with AI: capitalism and its ceaseless quest for profit. This lucid and accessible work shows us how AI threatens our capacity to think, relate to each other, and be 'in society' with each other. More than this, it provides a compelling and much-needed roadmap for how to reroute the technology toward more humane ends."
Alison Hearn, University of Western Ontario

"The messages of Nick Couldry's clear-eyed and analytically sharp book are simple and necessary. First, embodied human intelligence is so much more than decontextualized artificial intelligence. Second, we must prioritize social well-being over corporate profits. Few (I hope) would disagree with these points, but many of us struggle to articulate a different way forward. Predatory AI overcomes this struggle, offering hopeful avenues for reimagining the relationships we have with our minds, with our neighbours, and with our technologies."
Lisa Messeri, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

"Couldry's book synthesizes social theory, philosophy and a blizzard of recent work on AI to critique the institutions and industries that profit on the harvesting of culture. Its case for resistance lies in the discipline of clearly seeing as a whole what commerce prefers to leave broken apart. In this roadmap to resistance, we rediscover that a better social contract awaits all those people with bodies and minds willing to act together."
John Durham Peters, Department of English, Yale University, and Benjamin Peters, Department of Media & Communication, The University of Tulsa

"Couldry offers a compelling challenge to one of the defining assumptions of our age: that the future of AI should be determined by the commercial priorities of a handful of companies. Predatory AI presents a timely and powerful argument that intelligence is more than a commercial utility and that democracy - not markets alone - must shape our social contract with AI."
Beeban Kidron, author of Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back

"This is a learned, lucid and devastating critique of the current push to embed AI everywhere and in everything."
Julie E. Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center

"Nick Couldry's apotheosis of his trilogy proves, once again, the significance of his voice in public and academic debates on AI. The concept of 'embodied intelligence' carries his argument against the predatory nature of current commercial exploitation of AI technologies. Couldry's brilliant analysis of the underpinning industrial dynamics reveals the need for a social rethinking of AI, including its human and environmental dimensions. A must-read for any student and teacher who cares about humanity's future."
José van Dijck, Distinguished University Professor, Utrecht University

About the Author

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus at the London School of Economics and Political Science.