A thoughtful, learned contribution to the fevered conversation now surrounding AI.
A philosophically charged critique of the use of AI in the hands of human actors.
As Cambridge political scientist Runciman notes, machines may take over eventually, and perhaps in two phases: the First Singularity, where they do our work for us, and the Second Singularity, where they do our thinking for us and discover that humans are disposable. But note the order of the players in the subtitle: Corporations and states are “both like and unlike AIs and other kinds of artificial agents,” and it is unlikely that AIs will be able to achieve world mastery without the guidance of corporations and governments to which we have ceded so much power—and more likely the latter, since corporations as such are likely to evolve or disappear. “It’s not a question of us versus them,” writes Runciman of those artificial agents. “It’s a question of which of them gives us the best chance of still being us.” That question turns on many elements, including the nature of capitalism. Will it be a predatory capitalism, a capitalism that sees little growth (the author cites Brazil and Italy as modern examples), or a capitalism that has evolved to value its human actors? That’s anyone’s guess, but, perhaps comfortingly to some, Runciman argues that the much-touted digital revolution has produced little of lasting value: “Can the iPhone’s contribution to the sum of human well-being compete even with the humble washing machine?” Another aspect is whether the state, perhaps the most critical player in the author’s trinity, is going to side with humans or with AI. Perhaps comfortingly to all but the bots, he suggests that despite the state’s artificial characteristics, it’s humans that “are the source of its ability to function.” We may have a chance, after all.
A thoughtful, learned contribution to the fevered conversation now surrounding AI.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781631496943
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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