Useful as a demonstration of AI’s cut-and-paste possibilities, but little more.
Another exercise in cracker-barrel spirituality from New Age guru Chopra.
Why worry about AI? By Chopra’s lights, artificial intelligence “has the ability to make your thinking more intelligent and your inner life more conscious.” Marveling at the fact that AI efficiently rendered one of his YouTube videos into a Hindi translation without a lick of effort on his part—and apparently effortless enlightenment is a selling point here—Chopra sings the praises of the machine as an agent for personal growth and, moreover, an agent that, though perhaps it shouldn’t supplant sessions with “your personal therapist,” can distill the wisdom of the ages into a few guiding maxims. To his minimal credit, Chopra at least recognizes that the machine itself doesn’t have consciousness or “spiritual wisdom,” but it can create abstracts of a huge library of it “with amazing speed and distill centuries of teaching into simple, clear ideas.” Voilà: instant karma and effortless dharma, a dumbing-down that Chopra further dumbs down with his relentless cheerleading. It’s the machine that does most of the work in this book: Chopra asks ChatGPT and other engines a question or gives it a directive such as “Give seven bullet points to indicate the major benefits of meditation.” Wait a beat, and the machine spits out a list that includes the nostrum, “Meditation can help alleviate insomnia and improve sleep quality by calming the mind and reducing racing thoughts that often disrupt sleep.” Given that half of the book is machine generated, one wonders if AI is getting a share of the royalties. The question that’s truly asked and answered is this: Since the machine can generate canned spiritual instruction for anyone who asks, it would seem that a book such as this will soon be redundant, if not already so.
Useful as a demonstration of AI’s cut-and-paste possibilities, but little more.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593797525
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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