“Beautifully written and richly documented, Louise Amoore's Cloud Ethics analyzes the workings of algorithms in contemporary society, from those assessing security risks to self-learning and self-programming neural nets. She draws on her extensive interviews with experts in the field to explore the nuances of algorithmic doubt and certainty. Finally, she calls for a new ethics of doubt in which the individual components of algorithms are scrutinized to open new spaces for critique that can ‘crack open’ the seemingly certain fabulations of algorithmic calculation. Technically stunning and critically informed, this book is required reading for anyone interested in how to resist the current trends toward algorithmic governmentality.” - N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Research Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles
“Calling for an embrace of the contingency and doubt that is inherent in the structure and working of algorithms, this important book refuses mythologies of certainty and machinic omnipotence. Framing computation as a partial accounting, Cloud Ethics moves beyond the unproductive binaries of ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ to consider algorithms as generative of complex political possibilities.” - Caren Kaplan, author of Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above
"Similar to scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, Amoore engages with a wide range of philosophers and novelists to make sense of the ethicopolitical implications of algorithms. As a result, the book is highly engaging and is densely packed with novel ideas and concepts (e.g., ‘space of play’ and ‘algorithmic author function’) that will undoubtedly take on a life of their own in future research. Given their proliferation in society, there has never been a more apt time to examine the ethicopolitical impact of algorithms, and Louise Amoore’s Cloud Ethics is the book to turn to." - Ben Jacobsen, Information, Communication & Society
"Amoore . . . has written what I consider to be essential reading for anyone interested in the ethical and political analysis of our digital condition." - Davide Panagia, Public Books
“Cloud Ethics takes up the ethico-political questions surrounding machine learning and deep neural network algorithms and how they have become arbitrators in governing significant spheres and spaces of human involvement…. At a time when there is a complete polarisation of opinion regarding the use of algorithms as the reactions are generally that of either paranoia or celebration, Amoore’s book attempts to give the reader a much-needed clarity regarding its intricate operations albeit through hefty philosophical concepts, debates and ideas.”
- Suryansu Guha,
Theory, Culture & Society
“In a Covid-19 world increasingly organized through new technologies of algorithmic governance, racialized surveillance regimes, biometric data collection, and contact tracing, Louise Amoore’s Cloud Ethics couldn't be more timely. By fabulating an ethicopolitics of algorithmic systems, or what she nominates a cloud ethics, Amoore contributes to a growing body of scholarship dedicated to critiques of artificial intelligence, surveillance regimes, and algorithmic governance.” - Erin McElroy, Society and Space
“Amoore’s text will be of great interest to critical communication scholars, political scientists, and researchers from other disciplines and fields interested in critical algorithm studies. ...Cloud Ethics is a text that will exceed its source, one that will benefit debates and contention within the academic fields it touches on as well as society at large.” - Catherine Jeffery, International Journal of Communication
“[Cloud Ethics] substantially advances our understanding of the ethical and political considerations necessary for navigating this ever-changing world.... It also subtly offers a methodology for the social sciences to intervene in discussions on the algorithmic, through reading against the grain of technical books and fabulation as a tool of critique.” - Andrew C. Dwyer, AAG Review of Books
“Cloud Ethics is a demanding, exciting, and timely read. . . . It will travel well across most social sciences and even humanities, and will be of interest to scholars in ethics, politics, government and technology, but also aesthetics, law, and literature.” - Juan M. del Nido, Anthropos
"Cloud Ethics is a significant achievement in many ways. . . . Stories about ourselves and others are told by algorithms, and they are never complete. In placing this emphasis on partial accounts, Cloud Ethics highlights the complex relationship between truth and knowledge, which, in turn, shows how a partial account is both conditioned and conditioning." - M. Beatrice Fazi, Political Geography
"The book makes enduring contributions to how many of us problematize the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI), algorithms, machine learning, and the many other automated systems in society. . . . In a time where the ethics of research practice and indeed the ethics of academia more generally are under significant, sometimes hostile, scrutiny we should celebrate those who embody the ethical practices to which, I contend, we should aspire. Amoore sets an example we can all admire in that regard." - Sam Kinsley, Political Geography
"Cloud Ethics was researched and written quite some time before the first launch of ChatGPT and other generative AI models, but it presciently thematizes questions that have only become more pertinent since the book’s publication." - Elke Schwarz, Political Geography
"In this febrile context in which AI in all its forms is being interrogated, [Amoore's] argument about the provisionality of AI is an exceptionally necessary contribution. . . . If machine learning is indeed as much fabulation as technique, the discussion of its dynamics in Cloud Ethics is a vital contribution to understanding both." - Gillian Rose, Political Geography
