Helpful advice to quell workers’ anxiety.
A technology journalist proposes future-oriented skills to prepare people for a new machine age.
To counter worry that artificial intelligence will make human workers obsolete, New York Times tech columnist Roose offers an upbeat, practical guide for dealing with “a world that is increasingly arranged by and for machines.” Rather than competing with machines by trying to work longer hours and beefing up technological knowledge, the author advises that humans should optimize skills that machines cannot emulate: “handling the unexpected,” for example; meeting “social and emotional needs”; and doing jobs “that involve novel circumstances, low-probability events, and rare combinations of skills.” AI is programmed to address “big data sets, large numbers of users, or huge quantities of inputs or outputs” but not to transfer knowledge from one problem to another. If people want to make themselves harder to replace, they should hone their ability to do things that require creativity, flexibility, and “human accountability.” Among the nine rules that Roose suggests for the future are a few that deliberately distance humans from technology: Wrest your attention from constantly checking your phone; curb “hustle tendencies” to overfill your schedule and drown yourself in work obligations; increase interaction with others by physical proximity, collaborative projects, and social videoconferences even if you work remotely; and speak up about “the potential stakes” of implementing AI and automation in your workplace. It’s crucial, Roose asserts, to keep humans involved in critical processes. Essential skills for the future include the ability to pay sustained attention (a skill undermined by the distractions of the internet); being able to hone emotional intelligence and empathy; media literacy; “treating other people well” and “acting ethically”; and becoming a “consequentialist,” applying critical thinking to evaluate the success or failure of AI processes and tools and “to analyze new products and imagine all the ways they could go wrong.”
Helpful advice to quell workers’ anxiety.Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13334-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward, carefully detailed presentation of how ``fruit comes from flowers,'' from winter's snow-covered buds through pollination and growth to ripening and harvest. Like the text, the illustrations are admirably clear and attractive, including the larger-than-life depiction of the parts of the flower at different stages. An excellent contribution to the solidly useful ``Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science'' series. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-020055-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991
Yes: it's high time for a de-romanticized, de-mythified, close-up retelling of the U.S. Space Program's launching—the inside story of those first seven astronauts.
But no: jazzy, jivey, exclamation-pointed, italicized Tom Wolfe "Mr. Overkill" hasn't really got the fight stuff for the job. Admittedly, he covers all the ground. He begins with the competitive, macho world of test pilots from which the astronauts came (thus being grossly overqualified to just sit in a controlled capsule); he follows the choosing of the Seven, the preparations for space flight, the flights themselves, the feelings of the wives; and he presents the breathless press coverage, the sudden celebrity, the glorification. He even throws in some of the technology. But instead of replacing the heroic standard version with the ring of truth, Wolfe merely offers an alternative myth: a surreal, satiric, often cartoony Wolfe-arama that, especially since there isn't a bit of documentation along the way, has one constantly wondering if anything really happened the way Wolfe tells it. His astronauts (referred to as "the brethren" or "The True Brothers") are obsessed with having the "right stuff" that certain blend of guts and smarts that spells pilot success. The Press is a ravenous fool, always referred to as "the eternal Victorian Gent": when Walter Cronkite's voice breaks while reporting a possible astronaut death, "There was the Press the Genteel Gent, coming up with the appropriate emotion. . . live. . . with no prompting whatsoever!" And, most off-puttingly, Wolfe presumes to enter the minds of one and all: he's with near-drowing Gus Grissom ("Cox. . . That face up there!—it's Cox. . . Cox knew how to get people out of here! . . . Cox! . . ."); he's with Betty Grissom angry about not staying at Holiday Inn ("Now. . . they truly owed her"); and, in a crude hatchet-job, he's with John Glenn furious at Al Shepard's being chosen for the first flight, pontificating to the others about their licentious behavior, or holding onto his self-image during his flight ("Oh, yes! I've been here before! And I am immune! I don't get into corners I can't get out of! . . . The Presbyterian Pilot was not about to foul up. His pipeline to dear Lord could not be clearer"). Certainly there's much here that Wolfe is quite right about, much that people will be interested in hearing: the P-R whitewash of Grissom's foul-up, the Life magazine excesses, the inter-astronaut tensions. And, for those who want to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt throughout, there are emotional reconstructions that are juicily shrill.
But most readers outside the slick urban Wolfe orbit will find credibility fatally undermined by the self-indulgent digressions, the stylistic excesses, and the broadly satiric, anti-All-American stance; and, though The Right Stuff has enough energy, sass, and dirt to attract an audience, it mostly suggests that until Wolfe can put his subject first and his preening writing-persona second, he probably won't be a convincing chronicler of anything much weightier than radical chic.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1979
ISBN: 0312427565
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1979
BOOK TO SCREEN
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