Orly Lobel - The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future

A timely book on how we can create technologies that fight bias instead of intensifying it. Orly Lobel offers a compelling vision for a digital future thats fairer to all of us.

Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

What if technology could help? Two decades ago, that idea seemed obvious. Today, it seems impossible. But in this beautifully written and wide-ranging work, Lobel shows how a smart architecting of our technical environment can make us better humans, in a healthier environment. This is critical thinking and insight whenand wherewe need it most.

Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard University

With great computing power comes great responsibility. The Equality Machine shows how we can direct AI for good and create a society in which our lives are not limited by gender, race, sexuality, age, geography, or ability. As always, Lobel gives us a crystal-clear, front-row seat to our evolving digital realities. A must-read!

Jonah Berger, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Catalyst and Contagious

Artificial intelligence in particular and technology in general are changing almost every aspect of the human experience. Can smarter and smarter machines make life better and betterand not just for the few and the privileged, but for everyone? Lobel offers a compelling, inspiring, and actionable argument that the answer is yes.

Angela Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania, chief scientist, the Character Labor, and author of Grit

Who should we believe? The glass-half-full people who tell us that AI is going to bring about the next stage of human development, or the glass-half-empty people who tell us that this will be the end of all that is good about humanity? What Lobel shows in The Equality Machine is that the answer is up to us. We can implement AI in ways that deepen our challenges, and we can implement this technology in ways that both fix some of our existing problems and promote our human agenda.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational

The Equality Machine offers a hard-headed yet hopeful analysis of how digitization and artificial intelligence can reduce discrimination and promote opportunity. By rejecting both utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares, Lobel shows that its up to us to enlist these new technologies as forces for good and engines for progressive values. One of our sharpest legal minds has produced an utterly compelling book.

Daniel H. Pink , #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret , When , and Drive

With rich and engaging examples, Lobel brings together the too-often siloed debates over fears and hopes about artificial intelligence. With real, human intelligence, she identifies workable guards against gender and racial biases. She also highlights profound moral, political, and technical challenges worth both immediate and long-term attention.

Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, dean emeritus, and director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University

The Equality Machine is beautifully written, brimming with enthusiasm and can-do spirit. Lobel makes a compelling argument that AI can help solve some of our most important social problems, ranging from discrimination to human trafficking. Deeply aware of technologys virtues and limits, Lobel offers singular insights for anyone interested in technology and safety.

Frank Pasquale , law professor and author of The Black Box Society

Most discussions of AI and equality today focus on the negative: how AI systems pose risks of algorithmic bias and discrimination. Without being a tech apologist, Lobel gives us a much-needed dose of the positive: how AI can advance our aspirations for greater equality at work, in healthcare, at home, in our language and imagery, and in our relationships. The Equality Machine will take you on a tour of what people can build when aspiring to use the power of AI to make the world a more equal place. Read it and get inspired to join them.

Gillian Hadfield, director, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, University of Toronto, and senior policy adviser, OpenAI

Lobel offers a contrarian and original view: that technology can be a foundation for equality and inclusion rather than a source of bias and inequality. Read this book to find out why and how.

Oren Etzioni , CEO, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

With this incisive and engaging book, Lobel invites academics, nonprofit leaders, investors, business leaders, and policymakers to use data to solve the worlds most pressing problems, being neither cavalier nor afraid.

Jonathan Zittrain, faculty director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, and author of The Future of the Internet

Finally, a bold, positive, and forward-thinking approach to the challenges we face with automated technology.

Kate Darling, MIT Media Lab and author of The New Breed: What Our History with Animals Reveals About Our Future with Robots

Copyright 2022 by Orly Lobel

Cover design by Pete Garceau

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lobel, Orly, author.

Title: The equality machine : harnessing digital technology for a brighter, more inclusive future / Orly Lobel.

Description: New York : PublicAffairs, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022013119 | ISBN 9781541774759 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541774735 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Diversity in the workplace. | Equality. | Multiculturalism. | Information society.

Classification: LCC HF5549.5.M5 L59 2022 | DDC 658.3008dc23/eng/20220728

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013119

ISBNs: 9781541774759 (hardcover), 9781541774735 (ebook)

E3-20220828-JV-NF-ORI

To Danielle, Elinor, and Nataliekeep challenging, changing, and charting better worlds

And to On,
love of my life and fellow travelerkeep flying high

Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.