How To Think About AI
A Guide For The Perplexed
-
- £9.49
Publisher Description
Revealing the unfolding story of Artificial Intelligence, Richard Susskind presents a short non-technical guide that challenges us to think differently about AI. Susskind brings AI out of computing laboratories, big tech companies, and start-ups - and into everyday life.
In recent years, and certainly since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been massive public and professional interest in Artificial Intelligence. But people are confused about what AI is, what it can and cannot do, what is yet to come, and whether AI is good or bad for humanity and civilisation - whether it will provide solutions to mankinds major challenges or become our gravest existential threat. There is also confusion about how we should regulate AI and where we should draw moral boundaries on its use.
In How To Think About AI, Richard Susskind draws on his experience of working on AI since the early 1980s. For Susskind, balancing the benefits and threats of artificial intelligence is the defining challenge of our age. He explores the history of AI and possible scenarios for its future. His views on AI are not always conventional. He positions ChatGPT and generative AI as no more than the latest chapter in the ongoing story of AI and claims we are still at the foothills of developments. He argues that to think responsibly about the impact of AI requires us to look well beyond todays technologies, suggesting that not-yet-invented technologies will have far greater impact on us in the 2030s than the tools we have today. This leads Susskind to discuss the possibility of conscious machines, magnificent new AI-enabled virtual worlds, and the impact of AI on the evolution of biological humans.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Susskind (The Future of the Professions), president of the Society for Computers and Law, offers a just-detailed-enough overview of "the benefits and threats" of artificial intelligence. Explaining the difference between "process-thinkers" and "outcome-thinkers," he notes that the former are more interested in how AI works while the latter care about what it can accomplish. He cites Noam Chomsky as an example of a process-thinker and Henry Kissinger as an example of an outcome-thinker, and argues that grasping the difference between the two is crucial to understanding the history of AI and where it's headed. Elsewhere, Susskind contends that it's not crazy to think AI has the potential to "generate unprecedented economic value" and to ameliorate the effects of climate change. He takes a comprehensive look at such possible benefits, but he also recognizes that the risks might be equally large. These include AI's potential weaponization by bad actors and the possibility for "relentless surveillance." He concludes that balancing the pros and cons "is the defining challenge of our age." Rendering intricate matters of law and ethics in accessible terms, Susskind makes good on his promise "to offer some assurance that you don't need to be a technology expert to think and talk sensibly about the impact of AI." There's much here to chew on.
