A decent encapsulation of the early stages of a possible visionary path forward with AI.
An innovative scientist’s memoir explores her quest to humanize technology.
El Kaliouby, who grew up in Egypt and Kuwait in a conservative family, is the co-founder and CEO of Affectiva, an “AI startup spun off from the MIT Media Lab.” Tracing her journey from academic to global industry leader, the author describes her creation of a new realm of computer science, one that integrates artificial intelligence with emotional intelligence (EI). The author, “a child of the computer age,” charts an impressive research path from her doctoral studies at Cambridge University to postdoctoral work at MIT to the private sector. El Kaliouby, a self-described nice Egyptian girl, candidly shares her successes and challenges alongside passionate insights about gender and culture. She also unpacks how drive and determination can stretch imagination, documenting how she helped to design and build facial detection elements to enhance the mechanics of AI with emotion. Based on existing digital connectivity, the author sees AI–EI integration as an inevitability rather than an option. However, she doesn’t make a case so much as explain how the ghost may fit in the machine. The narrative is a fairly one-sided, optimistic view that may not convince critics or digital minimalists, but it should also help inspire like-minded thinkers to continue to innovate. Citing numerous potential benefits that include responding to declining empathy rates and prospective medical applications, el Kaliouby outlines her company’s emphasis on upholding high ethical standards and protecting privacy. The author misses a few opportunities for deep reflection on nuanced concerns such as technology addiction, potential conflicts between corporate interests and public trust, and the implications of expecting machines to respond rather than just compute. Though somewhat unbalanced, the book effectively conveys her goal of improving people’s lives through technology that is sensitive to human sentiment.
A decent encapsulation of the early stages of a possible visionary path forward with AI.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2476-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Currency
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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