# The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity

1 Books March 5, 2019 ![Cover of The Big Nine](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/The-Big-Nine---article.jpg?itok=rZ7leUAk) By Amy Webb > Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we--the everyday people whose data powers AI--aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into--one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations--Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain.

In this book, Professor [Amy Webb](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/amy-webb) reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI – the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself – is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity.

Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations. ##
To learn more, visit [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Big-Nine-Thinking-Machines-Humanity/dp/1541773756)

## More from Amy Webb

- [Why "Living Intelligence" Is the Next Big Thing.](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/why-living-intelligence-next-big-thing)
- [Bringing True Strategic Foresight Back to Business.](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/bringing-true-strategic-foresight-back-business)
- [How to Prepare for a GenAI Future You Can’t Predict.](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/how-prepare-genai-future-you-cant-predict)
- [The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/genesis-machine-our-quest-rewrite-life-age-synthetic-biology)
- [In a video segment, Professor Amy Webb reviews scenes from movies that are set in the future](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/news/video-segment-professor-amy-webb-reviews-scenes-movies-are-set-future)