Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future

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  1. Amazing insight into AI
    I have enjoyed reading Jeremy Kahn’s writing since his time at the Daily Pennsylvanian. Mastering AI represents a true literary achievement that makes this complex subject understandable to a general audience. It should be on everybody’s must-read list for 2024. This book cements Jeremy Kahn’s legacy as one of the most insightful authors of our time.

  2. Why AI is “strange and frightening” but also “exciting and fabulous”
    I recently re-read Vernon Vinge’s essay, “The Coming of Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” (1993), in which he suggests that “the acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur).”In The Singularity Is Near (2005), Ray Kurzweil predicts that “convergent, exponential technological trends” are “leading to a transition that would be ‘utterly transformative’ for  humanity.” I was again reminded of that prediction  as I began to read The Singularity Is Nearer (2024) in which Kurzweil explains how and why humanity’s “Mellenia-long march toward the Singularity has become a sprint. In the introduction to The Singularity Is Near, I wrote that we were then ‘in the early stages of this transition.’ Now we are entering its culmination. That book was about glimpsing a distant horizon — this one is about the last miles along the path to reach it .”In Chapter 13 of Mastering AI, Jeremy Kahn observes, “Vinge thought that once AI systems acquired the ability to self-improve, they would begin learning at an exponential rate until their knowledge and abilities vastly exceeded humankind’s. Consciousness, he assumed, would come with this intelligence explosion. And, unike [Irving J.] Good, Vinge assumed superintelligence would be extremely difficult to control. Any intelligent machine of the sort [Good] describes would not be humankind’s ‘tool’ — any more that humans are the tools of rabbits or robins or chimpanzees,’ he wrote.”Kahn suggests, “Unlike Vinge, Kurzweil has a mostly utopian vision. He sees superintelligence primarily as a tool for the expansion of human potential and posits an increasingly close collaboration between human intelligence and machine ones, possibly through direct brain-computer interfaces.”These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the nature and scope of Kahn’s coverage:o Introduction (Pages 1-9)o Turing’s Test– AI’s Original Sin (13-17 and 106-107)o Building Turin’s Intelligent Machine (17-20)o Deep Learning Takes Off (25-36, 100-101, and 188-192)o (31-32 and 47-48)o Knowledge (42-43, 48-50, and 90-93)o The Talking Cure (57-61)o Everyone on Autopilot (68-70, 80-82, and 85-86)o The Data Advantage (87-102)o Anthropic (99-100 and 237-239)o Rich, Only to Be Wretched? (103-120)o Education (121-137)o Sal Khan (128-130)o Science: A Microscope for Data (162-180)o “Hypothesis Hiatus” (170-171, 176-178, and 80-82)o Law Enforcement/Racial Bias (194-199)o Progress, Not Prfection (222-229)o Out of Alignment (232-235)o Constitutional AI (237-239)o A Place of Greater Safety (242-244)o Conclusion: Toward Our Superpowered Future (245-248)Jeremy Kahn’s concluding thoughts: “Individually and collectively, we must have courage. Yes, this technology is strange and frightening, but it is also exciting and fabulous, in equal measure. It can, if used correctly. improve our lives immeasurably. Like every other technology that has come before, we can master AI. But to do so, we must master ourselves. We must apply our own natural intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. If this is indeed the last invention humanity ever creates, we’d better make it good.”Mastering AI is a brilliant, substantial contribution to thought leadership at a time when the business world is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall. Bravo!* * *Here are two other suggestions while you are reading Mastering AI: First, highlight key passages Also,  perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at- hand, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to key points posed within the narrative. Also record your responses to specific or major issues or questions addressed, especially in the paragraph that concludes each chapter.These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.

  3. ChatGPT: Your New CEO!
    Last year, the chief executive of a new online T-shirt company in Portugal announced that he had named ChatGPT as “the CEO” of his start-up. According to Jeremy Kahn, author of “Mastering AI,” Joáo Ferráo dos Santos named his new company “AIsthetic Apparel” and said he “would simply execute the tasks ChatGPT recommended.”I predict you’ll meet dozens of people who will be talking about this fascinating new book in the months ahead. The project began as a “Fortune” magazine cover story on OpenAI and the creation of ChatGPT and evolved into this powerhouse overview of artificial intelligence. The author is an award-winning journalist for “Fortune” and writes their weekly “Eye on AI” newsletter, plus cochairs Fortune’s Brainstorm AI technology conferences.Jeremy Kahn is very optimistic about AI, but moderates the good news with ample bad news. Examples:CHAPTER 4: EVERYONE ON AUTOPILOT• Good News. Discussing “the return of the human apprentice,” Kahn lists law firms that are creatively using AI legal software. He quotes Jake Heller, co-founder of Casetext, who says that “AI should make the profession less ‘draining and soul sucking.’” (How would you describe your profession?)• Bad News. For many gig economy workers (Uber, etc.), they soon discover “that the only way to earn a decent wage is to meet the demanding, sometimes inhumane, expectations of an algorithm.”• Good News. Walmart uses “My Assistant,” an AI copilot and 50,000 employees have access to this new software aide.CHAPTER 12: WAR AT MACHINE SPEEDThe first chapter I read in “Mastering AI” was “War at Machine Speed.” Oh, my!• Bad News. “Deploying autonomous weapons places us on a slippery slope to losing control over warfare. Autonomy inevitably begs more autonomy.” Kahn summarizes the potential results between enemies: “Spy vs. spy becomes AI vs. AI.”• Bad News. When terrorists and nations have “a new toy for mass murder: artificial intelligence,” we will find that AI is an accelerant, not a deterrent, to war—thus “…making conflict more likely and expanding, not limiting, its scope.”• Bad News. Noting the “naked soldier” scenario from Michael Walzer, “a philosopher known for his thinking about the ethics of warfare,” the author believes “the critical issue is that autonomous weapons obliterate the possibility of mercy.” (Must-read!)CHAPTER 7: ARISTOTLE IN YOUR POCKET• Good News. Students cheered the November 2022 release of ChatGPT and labeled it “CheatGPT,” but teachers panicked. Yet Kahn pushes back. “AI will change education. Teachers will need to adopt new methods. But the moral panic and hand-wringing is misplaced.” (He reminds us that CliffsNotes in the 1950s and calculators in the 1970s also created misplaced hysteria.)• Bad News or Good News? “If the AI revolution helps dethrone the lecture as the primary pedagogical tool in undergraduate education and replaces it with the seminar, that would be no bad thing.” (Attention Church Leaders: Might AI displace the sermon? Is that good or bad?)• Good News or Bad News? “AI is an existential threat to colleges and universities. But not because of the risk of rampant cheating. No, the real risk to higher education is irrelevancy.”CHAPTER 2: THE VOICE INSIDE YOUR HEAD• Bad News. In the section, “The Erasure of Provenance,” Kahn writes, “Memory and its link to learning is just one cognitive ability AI may damage. It could diminish our intellectual powers in other ways, too.” He adds that generative AI, in “providing a confident summarized answer, makes the abandonment of critical thinking all too easy. Anyone who has conversed with ChatGPT or its rivals, Bing, Gemini, and Claude, will know that these chatbots are often wrong, even when they sound right.” He fears “groupthink.”• Good News/Bad News. The good news is that Kahn’s comprehensive book—efficiently written from a competent reporter’s perspective—sounds the AI alarm and addresses both ethical and moral issues. The bad news: “…our use of AI to write and read for us is just one way this technology could contribute to a risky moral deskilling. More troubling is the delegation of decisions that require moral judgment to AI.”• Good News. What about AI in the classroom? “Children should also be instructed in ethics. And vitally, they must still learn how to write.” Gratefully, Kahn probes deep on the moral and ethical issues of AI in every chapter.CHAPTER 5: PILLARS OF INDUSTRY• Good News. The publishing industry will benefit “…where AI might not just help authors write, but also change the way books are read, changing the industry’s economics.” Example: you will have an “AI reading companion that can answer questions, look up unfamiliar references, or provide literary analysis.” Watch for virtual book clubs also.• Bad News. The big will get bigger (architectural firms, major movie studios, law firms, etc.), but “midsize businesses will probably fare the worst.” (Read why “the business models of entire fields will be upended.”)• Good News. This is a wake-up call! AI will enable “personalized product promotion” with more intelligent use of customer data. Example: Domino’s Pizza in Mexico were victims of the old adage that “half of an ad budget is wasted, you just don’t know which half.” Now with AI software, they’ve grouped their customers “into several buckets, and using AI, offered predictions of the best messages, best medium, and best times to reach out to people.”• More Good News. “As a result, Domino’s Mexico saw a 700 percent increase in the return on its Google ad spending and cut customer acquisition costs by 65 percent, while increasing customer retention.”THERE’S MORE!I can’t stop talking about this book. I’m astounded at the deep-and-wide content of “Mastering AI.” The book checks all the boxes and I’ve underlined hundreds of insights, including:• History: ENIAC and the Turing Test (“AI’s Original Sin”)• Authenticity and Trust: ontology and epistemology• Why Microsoft built a data center in Iowa the size of 20 football fields!• Why early innovators hated the term “artificial intelligence” and why “deep learning” was a brilliant term• Why “confabulation,” not “hallucination,” might describe AI’s shortcomings betterSomeone on your team needs to read this book. (Gift this book to your pastor or priest also!) And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.

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