Artificial Knowing

by Alison Adam

Artificial Knowing challenges the masculine slant in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) view of the world. Alison Adam admirably fills the large gap in science and technology studies by showing us that gender bias is inscribed in AI-based computer systems. Her treatment of feminist epistemology, focusing on the ideas of the knowing subject, the nature of knowledge, rationality and language, are bound to make a significant and powerful contribution to AI studies.
Drawing from theories by Donna Haraway and Sherry Turkle, and using tools of feminist epistemology, Adam provides a sustained critique of AI which interestingly re-enforces many of the traditional criticisms of the AI project. Artificial Knowing is an esential read for those interested in gender studies, science and technology studies, and philosophical debates in AI.

Genres: Technology, Feminism, Nonfiction

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 1998

Reviews

[Adrian Halpert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alison Adam offers a valuable and thought provoking argument about the development of AI: that for the most part it's being developed by men who unknowlingly infuse their particular perspectives into their coding. The result are programs that operate within the same set of perspectives, biases, etc as the men who code them.
I found Adam's feminist perspective on AI development refreshing and a much needed voice as we push ahead with developing this technology. Tech is great, but sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves, as Alison Adam has here, whose tech is this and whose interests does it serve?
A great book that left me with lots to think about.
4/5 Stars

[Jan D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well readable book on gendered ideas of knowledge that are used in developing knowing and thinking algorithms and knowledge representations. The examples are dated in the sense that current AI is working far more with neural networks and statistical methods rather than formal abstractions of thinking. But the ideas what is means to be rational are culturally still influential and have been combined with the newer technologies and are still claimed to be unbiased and rational machines.

[hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

“not only considering how their bodily skills interact in the world–how non-propositional knowledge is grounded–but also involves considering how the individual is situated within a culture and acquires and uses cultural ways of knowing”

[Anabel Giacobbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff. I read selected chapters throughout the semester, so it's difficult to consider this book as a discrete piece of writing from everything else I was reading. I guess that's sort of the point though?