McPherson conveys the thrill of the possibility inherent in AI, but she’s frequently a giant step ahead of the game.
McPherson presents the evolution of artificial intelligence—machines with the “humanlike ability to reason and solve problems.”
That definition opens McPherson’s tour d’horizon of artificial intelligence, immediately placing readers on shaky ground. Philosophers have been debating “to reason” since long before Descartes. There is little doubt that McPherson richly explores the women and men who develop machines to do the drudge work of mechanical production and everyday life, but do either the amusingly crafty Watson, which took down the Jeopardy! game show champs, or Deep Blue, which humiliated Garry Kasparov, qualify as “a truly thinking machine, able to learn on its own and modify its own programming without human input”? The ability for a machine to reckon if/then is part of its programming. Sentience, which includes feeling, is stickier. How is it possible, as McPherson writes, that a machine programmed by humans “might not share human social and ethical values—such as notions of fairness, justice, and right and wrong”? Throughout, there’s too much supposition and not enough science; emblematic of this is a failure to convey exactly how Google Brain arrived at the concept of a cat without being commanded to: “All on its own, it had developed the concept of ‘cat.’ ”
McPherson conveys the thrill of the possibility inherent in AI, but she’s frequently a giant step ahead of the game. (Nonfiction. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5124-1826-2
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Twenty-First Century/Lerner
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Entertaining and enlightening.
In his debut, Science magazine reporter Kean uses the periodic table as a springboard for an idiosyncratic romp through the history of science.
Ranking Dmitri Mendeleev’s creation of the first version of the periodic table (“one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind”) alongside achievements by Darwin and Einstein, the author extends the metaphor of a geographical map to explain how the location of each element reveals its role—hydrogen and chlorine in the formation of an acid, carbon as the building block of proteins, etc.—and how gaps in the table allowed for future discoveries of new elements. Kean presents the history of science beginning with Plato, who used the Greek word for element for the first time in the belief that elements are fundamental and unchanging. The author then looks at Marie Curie, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 for her discovery that the radioactivity of uranium was nuclear rather than chemical. Kean suggests that nuclear science not only led to the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, but was instrumental in the development of computers. The women employed by the Manhattan Project, he writes, in “hand-crunching long tables of data…became known by the neologism ‘computers.’ ” The author is a great raconteur with plenty of stories to tell, including that of Fritz Haber, the chemist who developed nitrogen fertilizer and saved millions from starvation, and applied his talents in World War I to creating poison gas, despite the protests of his wife, who committed suicide. “Between hydrogen at the top left and the man-made impossibilities lurking along the bottom,” writes the author, “you can find bubbles, bombs, money, alchemy, petty politics, history, poison, crime, and love. Even some science.” Nearly 150 years of wide-ranging science, in fact, and Kean makes it all interesting.
Entertaining and enlightening.Pub Date: July 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-05164-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
PROFILES
For high schools that assign one book for all students to read and discuss: This is the one.
With simple, matter-of-fact language, an attractive layout and an abundance of references, this compact guide to addressing climate change is a must-read for millennials and for all who seek solutions to global warming.
Fleischman begins with a personal story about noticing dead bees in his driveway and wondering about the cause. He uses this incident to emphasize the point that history—specifically history related to environmental issues—is happening all around us and is undeniably related to the choices made by both individuals and institutions. He clearly states the book’s goal early on: “to give you a foundation under your decisions.” The pages that follow—best read slowly and sequentially—represent a crash course in recent and ancient environmental issues, drawing from history, economics, psychology and sociology to pursue the stated goal. Readers are offered advice on how to analyze and interpret what they hear in person and discover through the media. There is a laudable restraint; even as the text relentlessly shows how human beings have created climate change, sources are also given to read “the most respected” divergent views. Despite its unflinching presentation of facts about myriad environmental concerns, the book manages to end on a note of hope for a new generation of activists.
For high schools that assign one book for all students to read and discuss: This is the one. (source notes, bibliography, suggested resources, glossary, acknowledgements, image credits, index, website) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7102-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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