An accessible, insightful exploration of the history and evolving impact of AI technologies.
How the pursuit of artificial intelligence has unfolded and what it means for humanity.
Technology journalist Olson explores here the pioneering efforts of two CEOs, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, as they have led the development of revolutionary AI technologies. The book tracks their ascent to positions of extraordinary power, along with the gradual erosion of their idealism about the roles they might play in ensuring that the products they helped create would be devoted to ethical aims and the advancement of human welfare. We gain a jarringly clear sense of the radical social and economic changes already being brought about by AI and of at least some of the risks posed by them. Reckless greed and ambition, the author demonstrates, are driving innovation in this immensely lucrative field, and very little regulatory oversight exists to curb dangers that range from economic collapse spurred by the disappearance of industries taken over by machines to the even more sensational prospect of human annihilation at the hands of superintelligent robots. High-tech firms, we learn, have “cut corners and misled the public about their products, putting themselves on course to become highly questionable stewards of AI.” One immediate consequence of such deceptions, rendered vividly in discussions of notorious examples of racist and sexist results generated by AI, is that the technology reproduces the toxic prejudices of the data that trains it. As Olson ominously concludes of Altman and Hassabis: “They joined a long history of innovators who tweaked their ideals to stay in a race and build power. The result is some of the most transformative technology we have ever seen. Now to find out the price.”
An accessible, insightful exploration of the history and evolving impact of AI technologies.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781250337740
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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