Future Tense
How We Made Artificial Intelligence—and How It Will Change Everything
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Human history has always been shaped by technology, but AI is like no technology that has come before it. Unlike the wheel, combustion engines, or electricity, AI does the thing that humans do best: think. While AI hasn’t reproduced the marvelously complex human brain, it has been able to accomplish astonishing things. AI has defeated our players at games like chess, Go, and Jeopardy!. It’s learned to recognize objects and speech. It can create art and music. It’s even allowed grieving people to feel as though they were talking with their dead loved ones.
On the flip side, it’s put innocent people in jail, manipulated the emotions of social media users, and tricked people into believing untrue things.
In this non-fiction book for teens, acclaimed author and teacher Martha Brockenbrough guides readers through the development of this world-changing technology, exploring how AI has touched every corner of our world, including education, healthcare, work, politics, war, international relations, and even romance. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how artificial intelligence got here, how to make the best use of it, and how we can expect it to transform our lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to change everything—at least according to this plainly rendered work by Brockenbrough (Unpresidented). Employing prose that eagerly records the subjects' boundless potential, the author traces AI's development from 1950s chess-playing computers to present-day applications. Each iteration of AI has transformed the way society learns, lives, and works and, as mathematician and electrical engineer Claude Shannon (1916–2001) states, "it is certainly plausible to me that in a few decades machines will be beyond humans." As with many inventions, Brockenbrough posits in unadorned text, there are positives and negatives associated with the rise of AI ("A future with AI could bring fantastic things to humanity and the planet, even as there are some unknowns that can make us feel afraid"): cars that can drive themselves can also crash themselves, and the same systems that can diagnose illness in patients can also write—and potentially plagiarize—papers for students. While many questions regarding the future of AI remain unanswered, Brockenbrough is adamant that "we don't have a choice in whether AI will be part of our lives. It's already here." Ages 12–up.
