Artificial Intelligence

What Everyone Needs to Know

By: Jerry Kaplan

Narrated by: John Pruden

Artificial Intelligence is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans.

Whether we regard them as conscious or unwitting, revere them as a new form of life or dismiss them as mere clever appliances, is beside the point. They are likely to play an increasingly critical and intimate role in many aspects of our lives. The emergence of systems capable of independent reasoning and action raises serious questions about just whose interests they are permitted to serve, and what limits our society should place on their creation and use.

Deep ethical questions that have bedeviled philosophers for ages will suddenly arrive on the steps of our courthouses. And the answers may surprise you.

©2016 Oxford University Press (P)2017 Tantor

Nice book, but I

A fine book to learn general knowledge about the past, present, and future of AI. Nice exploration of some of the ethical and moral considerations regarding the technology.

However, it was a shame that he veered off into advocacy for socialist retreads to avoid poverty and mass starvation - which cause of such calamities! I’d argue that some of the past innovations he describes and their outcomes provide significant evidence to prove contrary economic conclusions.

Profound

Crisp and enlightening with the proper dose of relevance to present circumstances. If nothing else, skip to last chapter for a poetic yet sober analysis of what AI may hold for us.

A good summation of Artificial Intellegence

The Author who works in the artificial intelligence field gives good general prospects for how artificial intelligence can improve our lives and to a certain extent the harmful side effects, mostly focussing on the displacements of work from man to machine.

Although his outlook towards a runaway AI, or one/s that will take over the was left by him to the science fiction realm. His discounting of such events is mitigated by the probable likelihood as he mentioned for autonomous general artificial intelligence to be used for harm, in which case, a super artificial intelligence can certainly be a cause for concern and considered an existential threat to humanity.

Overall a good short synopsis of AI looked at from in a linear perspective, as he himself explained we are not hot-wired to recognise exponential growth. A satisfyingly short read, but the subjects warrants a much deeper look, which I hope a book in the future will provide.

Good Technical Overview

Presented a broad view of the present state of A. I. technology, and speculations into the near (and less strong) distant future. Weakest were the chapters on the role of philosophy, which the author confessed he (and humanity in general) had no clue as to where to go there (their not having read the Philosophy of Broader Survival). The book had another handicap - being associated with Oxford (the Oxford Press), which is an epicenter of institutionalized philosophical cluelessness.

Informative

interesting and definitely worth a read. Provides good insight into a topic that will significantly impact the world in the comming decades.