Madhumita Murgia’s ‘Code Dependent’ offers a powerful critique of data colonialism in the age of AI
The book was also shortlisted for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Nonfiction.
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It was a case of cold comfort when I ran into a reel of an influencer applauding delivery partners in India. While in Canada, she has to go to the post office herself to return a package. In India, a delivery partner picks it up at no cost from her location, saving her time and money. “I love my country,” she gushed. For this influencer and the many people commenting on her reel, this is a marker of progress and development, a sign of how far India has come. “India, India, Indiaaaa,” one user commented, a rallying cry for a system that dehumanises the individuals making it function: its workers.
The illusion of convenience
Delivery partners are not employees. They are gig workers with algorithms as managers and an HR department. A handful of powerful tech companies control the livelihoods of this vast, globally dispersed workforce subjected to constantly shifting rules, opaque pay scales, and arbitrary decisions made by AI systems they can't understand or appeal to.
In Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI, Madhumita Murgia interviews some of these gig workers in a comprehensive attempt to understand the far-reaching consequences of our increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. (If you think you don’t use AI, you’re...
