Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayFeeding the Machine
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBloomsbury presents Feeding the Machine by James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant, read by Orlando Wells.
For readers of Naomi Klein and Nicole Perlroth, A myth-dissolving exposé of what “artificial intelligence” really means, and a resounding argument for an equitable future of A.I.
Silicon Valley has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. But hidden beneath this smooth surface lies the grim reality of a precarious global workforce of millions laboring under often appalling conditions to make A.I. possible. This book presents an urgent, riveting investigation of the intricate network that maintains this exploitative system, revealing the untold truth of A.I.
Based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of fieldwork over more than a decade, Feeding the Machine describes the lives of the workers deliberately concealed from view, and the power structures that determine their future. It gives voice to the people whom A.I. exploits, from accomplished writers and artists to the armies of data annotators, content moderators and warehouse workers, revealing how their dangerous, low-paid labor is connected to longer histories of gendered, racialized, and colonial exploitation.
A.I. is an extraction machine that feeds off humanity’s collective effort and intelligence, churning through ever-larger datasets to power its algorithms. This book is a call to arms that details what we need to do to fight for a more just digital future.
James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant are based together at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, where Dr. Graham is a Professor of Internet Geography and Director of Fairwork, a global digital labor rights project active in the United States and 37 other countries. He has written for the Atlantic and the Guardian. Dr. Cant is the author of Riding for Deliveroo, the first ethnographic book on online food delivery. Dr. Muldoon is Associate Professor of Management at the University of Essex.
James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant are based together at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, where Dr. Graham is a Professor of Internet Geography and Director of Fairwork, a global digital labor rights project active in the United States and 37 other countries. He has written for the Atlantic and the Guardian. Dr. Cant is the author of Riding for Deliveroo, the first ethnographic book on online food delivery. Dr. Muldoon is Associate Professor of Management at the University of Essex.
James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant are based together at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, where Dr. Graham is a Professor of Internet Geography and Director of Fairwork, a global digital labor rights project active in the United States and 37 other countries. He has written for the Atlantic and the Guardian. Dr. Cant is the author of Riding for Deliveroo, the first ethnographic book on online food delivery. Dr. Muldoon is Associate Professor of Management at the University of Essex.