A thorough and thoughtful primer on the future of AI.
Wall assesses both the perils and promises of artificial intelligence in this nonfiction book.
The author, a successful entrepreneur, is not a blind cheerleader of artificial intelligence—he cautions that, if used improperly, it could “amplify our worst instincts and tendencies.” To counteract its dangers, he recommends a “human first approach,” one in which the awesome power of AI technology is channeled into the radical improvement of markets, labor, and society. In unfailingly accessible terms, Wall articulates a broad overview of the field aimed at readers with little to no expertise; he makes plain the basic differences between AI and robots, the nature of machine learning, and the ways in which machine learning both mimics and augments brain function. Wall argues that the proper employment of AI will be dependent upon the establishment of appropriate economic incentives that push technological innovation to “help us live longer and better lives.” To meticulously anatomize these incentives, he analyzes the business models of companies like Apple, Google, and Tesla, all of which are heavily invested in AI’s future. The author’s knowledge of the AI landscape is impressive, and he is especially effective at outlining the fundamental features of the technology. He convincingly explains, with admirable clarity, the distance between machine learning and human intelligence and why artificial intelligence is not consciousness, nor anything resembling human sentience. The reader can’t help but wish that Wall devoted more time to the issue of AI causing considerable unemployment, particularly since he so unflinchingly acknowledges that one of its essential purposes is to “replace human effort.” He also has a tendency to traffic in a vague moralism that seems to offer little more than platitudes: “When principles are clear, founders, owners, and leadership find it very simple to follow what they believe in.” As a single-volume introduction to the subject, though, this is a concise and helpful offering.
A thorough and thoughtful primer on the future of AI.Pub Date: March 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798987602706
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Smart Data Track LLC
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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