I usually don’t cover book reviews here. However, I read the commentary around the book reviews. Most books around AI and ML revolve around dystopian themes, with commentators attempting to “reimagine the future” and hence flying cars becomes an objective fascination. We have “real-world” problems. Those problems can’t be solved without political will and a clear understanding of fiscal prerogatives.
The Age of AI and Our Human Future — a technological triple threat | Financial Times
According to the authors of The Age of AI, humanity stands on the brink of an equally consequential moment, yet one that is more diverse, diffuse and unpredictable and less widely acknowledged. The increasing power of artificial intelligence, a general purpose technology that can be put to an astonishing array of civil and military uses — from reading X-rays and predicting weather patterns to empowering killer robots and spreading disinformation — is already scrambling centuries-old conceptions of national security and state sovereignty. Equally unnerving, the authors contend, is that AI will also test the outer limits of human reason and understanding and challenge the very nature of human identity and agency.
We already have a semblance of tools around disinformation and the medium. Surprisingly, the medium like Twitter, which is held responsible for the social discord, still sees a far greater engagement than warranted. If people are “outraged”, why don’t they leave the platform? It’s a better option. I don’t read anything about that happening.
My engagement with bots and social media is minimal.
Here’s more:
But more dynamic and surreptitious military technologies, such as cyber weapons, have recently multiplied and grown more destructive, while strategies for using them for defined aims have become more elusive. Just as ill-designed trading algorithms have been blamed for destabilising financial markets, so AI-enhanced cyber weapons could result in a strategic “flash crash”. As the authors write: “AI holds the prospect of augmenting conventional, nuclear and cyber capabilities in ways that make security relationships among rivals more challenging to predict and maintain and conflicts more difficult to limit.”
Future can’t be encapsulated like this in a “nutshell”. These books get traction because of the names, and I’ll be surprised if they haven’t been ghost written.
Highly avoidable. Its a pursuit of stupidity.
RadOncNotes 