A thoughtfully cautious appraisal of AI and its promise.
In this debut technology treatise, investor and entrepreneur Shwartz argues for more modest expectations for the future of artificial intelligence and a cleareyed assessment of its potential pitfalls.
The author observes that the general public’s conception of the promise of AI is largely the result of “fear-inducing hype” of the dystopian threat of a machine-led tyranny. Even notable technologists have jumped on the grim-prediction bandwagon, as when legendary physicist Stephen Hawking fretted in 2014 that the rise of intelligent computers “could spell the end of the human race.” The author compellingly argues that such prognostications are empirically indefensible and presuppose a technological sophistication that AI simply can’t claim. In fact, he says, the notion that machines can have humanlike intelligence conflates AI with artificial general intelligence, or AGI. The former is a reality but restricted to the performance of singular, exceedingly narrow tasks, Shwartz notes, while the latter—the emergence of machine-based consciousness—is an outright fiction. With impressive prudence, he asserts that AGI–based technology is unlikely at best: “How long will it be before we know enough about how people think to make real progress toward AGI? At the current rate of progress, it appears we will need hundreds—maybe thousands—of years, and it may never happen.” Throughout, the author astutely considers the very real challenges that AI poses, such as the potential threat to public safety from autonomous vehicles. At the heart of this searching account, however, is his elucidation of the contrast between human and artificial cognition: The former, he notes, is infinitely more complex and nimble and requires a “commonsense reasoning,” and the latter can only superficially mime it. Despite his subject’s forbidding technicality, Shwartz writes with unwavering clarity in a book that will be accessible to a wide audience.
A thoughtfully cautious appraisal of AI and its promise.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73542-453-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Fast Company Press
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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