An informative yet disturbing study and a clear warning from someone whose voice cannot be ignored.
Amid the flood of optimism about artificial intelligence, the significant dangers must be understood and assessed.
Suleyman might seem like a strange person to write a book about the dangers of AI. He is the CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, and, before that, he co-founded DeepMind (now owned by Alphabet), a company working at the leading edge of AI research. As the author shows, however, it is precisely because he is an expert that he knows enough to be fearful. He believes that within a few years, AI systems will break into the broad public market, placing enormous computing power in the hands of anyone with a few thousand dollars and a bit of expertise. Suleyman recognizes that this could bring remarkable benefits, but he argues that the negatives are even greater. One frightening possibility is a disgruntled individual using off-the-shelf AI to manufacture a deadly, unstoppable virus. Other scenarios range from disrupting financial markets to creating floods of disinformation. Suleyman accepts that the AI genie is too far out of the bottle to be put back; the questions are now about containment and regulation. There is a model in the framework established by the biomedical sector to set guidelines and moral limits on what genetic experiments could take place. The author also suggests looking at “choke points,” including the manufacturers of advanced chips and the companies that manage the cloud. The key step, however, would be the development of a culture of caution in the AI community. As Suleyman admits, any of these proposals would be extremely difficult to implement. Nonetheless, he states his case with clarity and authority, and the result is a worrying, provocative book. “Containment is not, on the face of it, possible,” he concludes. “And yet for all our sakes, containment must be possible.”
An informative yet disturbing study and a clear warning from someone whose voice cannot be ignored.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780593593950
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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