A brightly readable overview of how AI is poised to change human society—and perhaps humans themselves.
An exploration of the evolving relationships between humans and machines.
“We seldom think about how much we depend on our tools to extend the capabilities of our bodies,” technology consultant Meisel writes in his nonfiction debut. “A full view of evolution should include the tools we use constantly.” He proceeds to look at human evolution in just that way, drawing on his professional background in computer science to explore the history, nature, and possible future of artificial intelligence, which he expects to “get increasingly powerful and attack an increasing range of applications.” Meisel is an unapologetic champion of AI and marshals a wide array of cited facts and sources (each chapter ends with a reference list) to counter some of the most common objections to the greater ubiquity of high-power “smart” computing in all aspects of life. These include anxieties over the possibility of AI taking jobs from human beings; he argues that such technology would, in fact, create new jobs for people. Different chapters cover different aspects of AI, from increasing sophistication in speech recognition to advancements in “digital assistants,” now in millions of American homes, to the possibility of designing AI to mimic the deep neural networks of the human brain. Throughout, Meisel also insists on the intimate relationship between AI–infused tools and biology: “We make decisions based not only on our bodies, but on the availability of tools to help make a decision and tools to execute that decision,” he writes. “Tools extend the capability of our bodies including our brains.”
Meisel writes with the kind of knowledgeable conviction that can change minds. A persistent problem, though, is the book’s apparent misunderstanding of evolution by means of natural selection: “Humankind has always extended the ability of the human body and brain with tools,” he writes, for instance, which is true in the sociological sense but not the evolutionary sense; whatever changes that have happened to human bodies and brains over the last two centuries have likely been the result of improved nutrition and health care, not evolution. However, he compensates for this with the fierce energy with which he examines many aspects of the smart-technology world. He’s consistently engaging, for instance, when he writes about the role of tech in controlling objectionable speech in online forums: “Who decides what is ethical?” he asks. “Should we leave it in the hands of social media companies, or should it be set by governments or by industry consortiums?” Meisel’s upbeat attitude toward the future is intriguing even if some readers may consider it fairly dystopian. He believes in the enormous potential of his subject, writing that “the right tasks for AI is to do things that help humans with tasks, not emulate them.” Whether such optimism is merited is up for debate—if machines do eventually affect human evolution, it seems equally likely that they could impair human intelligence over the course of 10 generations—but it’s undeniably energizing. A brightly readable overview of how AI is poised to change human society—and perhaps humans themselves.Pub Date: April 13, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985794229
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Mindstir Media
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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