A balanced, encouraging breakdown of AI concerns in the workplace.
An overview of AI issues in the business and creative world.
In her nonfiction debut, entrepreneur and AI pioneer Graeser examines some of the upheavals—and some of the promise—involved in what she refers to as “an AI revolution.” Advances in AI in the business world are the stereotypical double-edged sword: On the one hand, AI has enormous potential to free workers from time-consuming rote tasks, but on the other hand, it can also lead to, at minimum, overreliance and deterioration of skills. In this book, Graeser introduces her readers to the facts about so-called generative AI, noting some of its attendant ethical problems, as well as complex matters of confidentiality, involving issues like health care data, trade secrets, intellectual property, electronic banking, and so on. In a series of economical chapters full of bullet points, “key takeaway” lists, illustrations, and flow charts, Graeser considers a wide range of AI types and how they’re being incorporated into businesses and research organizations: everything from designing commercial products for market to analyzing patient data for health care decisions to helping researchers consult an inhuman number of documents. She creates fictional examples of people in various business capacities dealing with AI, and she also fascinatingly offers a step-by-step account of her own use of it. All this combines to create a reassuringly calming guide to thinking about this AI revolution that has caught society by surprise with its sheer speed and ubiquity. Graeser isn’t a naysayer; she accepts AI’s intertwining with nearly all aspects of the business world and presents a picture of cooperating rather than supplanting: “The future of business is not about AI replacing humans,” she writes, “but about humans and AI working together to achieve what neither could do alone.” Much of the advice she gives will strike some readers as basic; for example, “Avoid letting AI make the final problem definition without human synthesis” or “Don’t accept AI-generated content without critical evaluation,” but it’s worthwhile to remember these fundamentals while the ground is shifting underfoot.
A balanced, encouraging breakdown of AI concerns in the workplace.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
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: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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