A well-constructed tour of technology and its discontents—timely, too, given the increasing prominence of AI in our daily...
London-based mathematician Fry (The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation, 2015, etc.) ponders thinking machines, the trust we put in them, and the implications for the future.
Forget about the singularity: The thinking machines are already upon us, and they make extraordinarily complex decisions, from how to battle cancer to whether to send someone to jail. The central question about artificial intelligence and the algorithms that drive it is whether we can trust them to do the right thing, especially if we are ceding decision-making power to mathematical constructs and probabilities. As Fry notes, algorithms alone can push us into some uncomfortable territory—e.g., the sentencing of criminal defendants, a process that, though perhaps driven by an altruistic wish for truly blind justice, puts members of ethnic minorities at a distinct disadvantage: The poorer and less educated a person, in many instances, the more a risk for nonappearance or flight he or she is judged to be. There may be reasons for that failure to show up in court; for one thing, as Fry asks, “do they have access to suitable transport to get there?” Programming the algorithm to account for “societal imbalances” may be one solution, and AI may be able to get around some of the discrimination that would bias a human judge. Still, programmers are people, too. In theory, technology is morally neutral—a drone can be used to take photographs or to kill people—so what really unfolds is what Fry describes at the outset: “Each [algorithm] is inextricably connected to the people who build and use it.” The author writes ably and accessibly of some of the thornier problems, not just in the administration of justice and health care but also in matters like the Bayesian inferences that go into operating driverless cars safely and using algorithms to revise film scripts to “make a movie more profitable at the box office.”
A well-constructed tour of technology and its discontents—timely, too, given the increasing prominence of AI in our daily lives.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-63499-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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