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The Age of AI: And Our Human Future Kindle Edition
Three of the world’s most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society—and what this technology means for us all.
Generative AI is filling the internet with false information. Artists, writers, and many other professionals are in fear of their jobs. AI is discovering new medicines, running military drones, and transforming the world around us—yet we do not understand the decisions it makes, and we don’t know how to control them.
In The Age of AI, three leading thinkers have come together to consider how AI will change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and the societies in which we live. The Age of AI is an essential roadmap to our present and our future, an era unlike any that has come before.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherLittle, Brown and Company
- Publication dateNovember 2, 2021
- File size927 KB
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From the Publisher
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Editorial Reviews
Review
" A salutary warning to handle this technology with care and build institutions to control it...With his co-authors Mr Kissinger has...used his vast experience and versatile mind to make a muscular contribution to one of the 21st century’s most pressing debates."―The Economist
"Good reading for those seeking to navigate the alt-reality world."―Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist. As Google’s Chief Executive Officer, he pioneered Google’s transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. He served as Google’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman from 2001-2011, Executive Chairman from 2011-2018 and most recently as Technical Advisor from 2018-2020. Under his leadership Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation. Prior to his career at Google, Eric held leadership roles at Novell and Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Daniel Huttenlocher is the inaugural dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Previously he served as founding Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech, the digital technology oriented graduate school created by Cornell University in New York City. He has a mix of academic and industry experience, as a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell and MIT, researcher and manager at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and CTO of a fintech startup. He currently serves as chair of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation board and as a member of the Corning Inc. and Amazon.com boards.
Product details
- ASIN : B095XH2N6Q
- Publisher : Little, Brown and Company (November 2, 2021)
- Publication date : November 2, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 927 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 220 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,602 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #3 in Politics of Privacy & Surveillance
- #6 in General Technology & Reference
- #9 in AI & Semantics
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, known for his pivotal role in the growth of Google as CEO and Chairman from 2001 to 2011, overseeing its transformation from a small startup to a global tech giant. Working alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its products, while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.
Eric currently serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees for The Broad Institute and as a board member for the Mayo Clinic and the Advisory Board at UC Berkeley, among others. His philanthropic efforts through The Schmidt Family Foundation and the Schmidt Ocean Institute with his wife Wendy, focus on climate change, including the support of ocean and marine life studies at sea, as well as education and cutting-edge research and technology in natural sciences and engineering. Notably, in 2024 Eric was awarded an honorary Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by His Majesty King Charles III for services to Philanthropy.
Additionally, he co-founded Schmidt Futures with his wife Wendy, which supports projects at the intersection of talent and technology, centered on specific, finite challenges that are connected to other efforts in the Schmidt philanthropic network. Most recently, the couple co-founded Schmidt Sciences, a nonprofit organization working to advance science and technology that deepens human understanding of the natural world and develops solutions to global issues.
In 2021, he founded the Special Competitive Studies Project, a non-profit initiative focused on strengthening America’s long-term AI and technological competitiveness in national security, the economy, and society. Eric is also a commissioner on the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB).
An accomplished author, Eric has co-authored three New York Times bestsellers, The New Digital Age, How Google Works, and Trillion Dollar Coach. In 2021, Eric co-authored the WSJ bestselling book The Age of AI: And Our Human Future with Dr. Henry Kissinger and Professor Daniel Huttenlocher. His most recent book, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit (2024), was co-written with the late Dr. Henry Kissinger, and Craig Mundie, offering a guide to how AI will shape the modern era.
Henry Kissinger served in the US Army during the Second World War and subsequently held teaching posts in history and government at Harvard University for twenty years. He served as national security advisor and secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and has advised many other American presidents on foreign policy. He received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal of Liberty, among other awards. He is the author of numerous books and articles on foreign policy and diplomacy, including most recently On China and World Order. He is currently chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book provides a good introduction to the history and current state of artificial intelligence. They consider it worth reading and a worthwhile investment. However, some readers feel the content lacks originality and is superficial or boring. Opinions vary on the pacing and writing style, with some finding it well-written and concise, while others describe it as sloppy and repetitive. There are differing views on the AI content, with some finding it informative and important, while others consider it a high-level overview.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book informative and thought-provoking. It covers technical, philosophical, and political aspects of AI. The authors provide a revealing background to its development and uses in modern society. They explore centuries of sociocultural and sociopolitical forces that paved the way for AI. The first half provides an instructive overview of what AI is and the probable ways it will impact society.
"...It explores centuries of sociocultural and sociopolitical forces that paved the way for AI and pranced through the evolution of human ingenuity,..." Read more
"...Some of the historical examples were interesting. They gave opinions with those historical moments. Not at the end of the chapter...." Read more
"...Although it carefully and eloquently discusses many important issues, it is disappointingly lacking in concrete suggestions for what to do and not do..." Read more
"...Kissinger brings a historical and philosophical lens, Schmidt offers insights from his time as Google’s CEO, and Huttenlocher adds depth with his..." Read more
Customers find the book a worthwhile read and worth their time and money.
"...book does warn us about these issues, and for that reason it is worth reading. But it does not make this point strongly enough, in my view...." Read more
"...The book is well worth reading, but I did find it redundant on numerous occasions. Still, read it for your own good." Read more
"...This book is definitely worth a read!" Read more
"...This is a formidable gamble and I am deeply worried with the authors that we may not meet this challenge, mainly for our insatiable needs for greed...." Read more
Customers have different views on the pacing of the book. Some find it well-written, with clear ideas and concise presentation. Others mention that the writing is sloppy, repetitive, and rambling without structure. The book also contains typos and seems cheaply produced.
"...bill as a pamphlet that conceptually explains what AI is, without the technicalities that may baffle non-technical readers...." Read more
"A very timely book on a possibly timeless topic! It will probably join the critic of reason as one of the early classics on the AI age." Read more
"...This is just sloppy writing. More filler content...." Read more
"...It does a great job in slicing and dicing vegetables. But it can cut flesh, when used carelessly. The tool is not good or bad in itself...." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's AI content. Some find it informative and important about the potential benefits and perils of AI, describing it as a must-read about an emerging new technology. Others find the overview vague and high-level, with little information that could not be found elsewhere.
"...In the end, AI is a software tool...." Read more
"Good discussion of the potential benefits and potential perils of AI and why it is important to consider and discuss these factors." Read more
"This is a very vague and high level overview of AI, written for someone who has never heard of AI before...." Read more
"...The technical material about AI is too vague to teach much. I found that about half way through I was just flipping pages." Read more
Customers find the book's content superficial and lacking originality. They find it boring and a waste of time, with banal generalities and philosophical musings overlaid on AI. The writing is sloppy and has typos, making it seem cheap.
"...The book has a heavy overlay of philosophical musings about how AI has given glipses into a here-before hidden nature of reality...." Read more
"...This is just sloppy writing. More filler content...." Read more
"...The book is well worth reading, but I did find it redundant on numerous occasions. Still, read it for your own good." Read more
"...Not a lot of original content, but then, like I said, it’s more of a statement than a study." Read more
Reviews with images
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Upset with Order
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2023What is this book? A treaty? A compendium? An impassioned plea? Or a sales pitch drawing its unique proposition from philosophy, history, and humanities littered with revelations of opportunities and doom?
It is everything, and more.
As of writing, GPT-4 is the rave in artificial intelligence (AI). But the world has already had intimations of AI's power through its predecessors, particularly ChatGPT. In a deluge of information, it is necessary to have a voice of authority and wisdom to explain the phenomenon we face. This book fits the bill as a pamphlet that conceptually explains what AI is, without the technicalities that may baffle non-technical readers. (I have enjoyed an interview between one of the authors, Eric Schmidt and Alexandr Wang, on the subject, which inspired my purchase of the book).
As a compendium, the book catalogues the development in computing and situates modern AI as the culmination of years of progress. It posits that we have created a thing with processing power that outstrips human cognition and can capture aspects of reality beyond human detection. AI can now beat us, quite literally, at our own game, as seen in chess, where an AI trained on the rules of the game augments itself to make independent and more compelling moves beyond human comprehension. Similarly, AI can discover new antibiotics in record time by merely being exposed to fundamental principles. Chess and medical breakthroughs are frequent references in the book, demonstrating the extent to which AI would affect domains once reserved for humans.
Chapter 2 is particularly delightful, with sentences brimming with such verve that one wishes it never ends. It explores centuries of sociocultural and sociopolitical forces that paved the way for AI and pranced through the evolution of human ingenuity, reason, and intellect. The chapter posits that AI's ability to upend every aspect of society surpasses the revolutions wrought by the printing press and electricity. These earlier technologies not only introduced new forms; they disrupted every aspect of society. The printing press bestowed new roles on the Western individual by wresting powers away from the Church and equipping the individual - facilitated by the Protestant agitations - with scholarly access to the divine. This psychological shift in the Western mind - sufficiently explored in Joseph Henrich's work, The Weirdest People in the World - launched the Renaissance, ushering in flourishing in arts, architecture, literature, and civic participation, ensuring the greatness of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. The authors contend that AI is destined to follow a similar trajectory.
The philosophical underpinnings of AI are captivating. The authors, probing AI's capture of reality, align it with Wittgenstein's view of making meaning through familiar connections rather than reducing reality to mechanistic explanations. Hence, the neural networks that inspire AI in mimicking the structure of the human brain place it far from mere computations of cause and effect, or garbage in, garbage out.
“To enable machine learning, what mattered was the overlap between various representations of a thing, not its ideal — in philosophical terms, Wittgenstein, not Plato. The modern field of machine learning — of programs that learn through experience — was born.”
Still, on philosophy, the book wonders if we are equipped to deal with our new fate. If AI can capture reality outside human conception, how do we retain our identity when perceptions would be determined by something beyond us? The authors concede that civilisation has been primarily created and sustained through the dynamics of Faith and Reason, and AI is designing a new form. It is a difficult notion to digest, since phenomena that thinkers and philosophers have grappled with, e.g., consciousness, divinity, nature/nurture, would become more challenging to comprehend.
There is a lot of caution in the book. The authors warn that where nuclear weapon is the most dreadful of human arsenals, AI surpasses it by an order of magnitude. This apocalyptic view is further compounded by the difficulty of designing effective verification systems for a rather inscrutable technology. It is to wonder what we have gotten ourselves into. Human ingenuity has birthed a hybrid of saint and devil. Where nuclear weapon is under international regulations in which nations with nuclear capabilities are under the watchful eyes of post-WWII and post-Soviet accords, how do we police something so insanely hard to detect, easily distributed, and accessible? Nuclear deterrence has so far saved us from annihilation. How do we protect ourselves from something that possesses the capacity to "transform conventional, nuclear, and cyber weapons strategy"? This makes the book an entreaty, inviting governments, policy wonks, and military thinkers to convene and hash out red lines that would ensure responsible applications.
For me, the positives outweigh the negatives if regulations are in place. And we must be careful to avoid stifling innovation under the guise of potential misuse. Moreover, as AI accelerates prosperity and instigates breakthroughs, how will it impact the global south? Will it leave a section of humanity behind while perpetuating historical patterns of economic inequities, a fact that Emad Mostaque of Stability AI has been vocal about? The book hints at it, but it would take a separate publication to articulate this concern.
Overall, it is a delightful book written by those who should write about AI and society.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2023This book started with the history of humanity and what things propelled society forward. Each chapter covered the history of that particular topic and then gave examples of society's current directions. There was never any follow up on directions that technology should or should not be doing, no solutions. The authors are very smart persons and it was disappointing to just be getting a review on the direction that technology and society has taken through the centuries. Some of the historical examples were interesting. They gave opinions with those historical moments. Not at the end of the chapter. No opinion or solutions to foreseeable problems.
What would be the best solution is to have a large group of persons that have experience with AI and other electrical technology such as the one already in place. This type of group is fully capable of making AI compatible with current technology in the countries they also represent. This is what a consortium has been doing with the internet and other technology: electric standards, radio standards, communications standards, the internet standards and now AI. No mention of this or IT Security. No Green ideas like have many people submitting to the electrical grid with the power they produce from solar and wind. Ideas like this are common now in the news. The authors wrote this before Ukraine in 2022 but there is an example of AI in warfare.
I am disappointment that these exceptional talented persons did not give examples of solutions that have been and are in use. No cautions about putting power and water on the internet. They currently should not be. They are not even upgrading software in those areas that is how important that is.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2023It's not every day that a book you're about to read announces that a new epoch has begun. This book does exactly that, then it backs up that claim with concrete examples of how this happened without your being aware of it. The epoch will probably be called the age of artificial intelligence, or “The AI Age” for short.
The first concrete example is a program that plays chess at the highest level possible. This program isn't the one you heard about years ago that finally was able to consistently beat chess grandmasters. Though that was a milestone, it wasn't an epoch-making one. This AI program beat the most powerful chess-winning programs, and not by just a little. The victories were complete blowouts. What's more, the chess experts who analyzed the program's moves were at a loss to figure out how it won. This book explains how this computer was trained to play chess differently.
A second contrete example is a program that discovered a new drug, Halicin, that can be used to treat patients infected with one of several bacteria strains that resist treatment with other anti-bacteria drugs. Without this AI program. the cost would have been way too high. There was only one molecule that had the unique properties necessary to be effective.
Still another example was an AI-style program that Google used to find how to cut its cooling costs for its ultra-powerful servers that it uses. Expert engineers had already improved energy-efficiency to the best of their ability. AI found ways to cut Google's another 40%.
The chess AI doesn't affect many ordinary people. The Halicin AI also will affect a relatively few, albeit with life-saving potential. But a cost-saving AI would benefit a much greater proportion of the general population.
However, its benefits are only half the story of AI. Risks are also present – risks so dire that they threaten to scuttle AI's rise to prominence. Indeed, the book's main thrust is how we might control the risks so that we can harvest AI's benefits as fully and safely as possible. A lot of thorny problems remain to be solved – which the book describes – before that can happen.
The book isn't perfect. It has three authors. This seems to have resulted, at times, in more repetition than necessary, though at other times it gives greater perspective on various aspects of AI. The book has a heavy overlay of philosophical musings about how AI has given glipses into a here-before hidden nature of reality. I found some of these philosophical discussions hard to grasp, especially those that reference Immanual Kant whose writings always seem to be unable to penetrate through my incomprehension.
Quite a bit of the book seems written for policy managers in business, government and universities, but there is enough directed at a general audience, including myself, to attract our attention. I'm glad of this because general audiences have a huge influence on policies by virtue of our election choices, our purchase choices, our school attendances, and our classroom interactions. All of these will shape the world going forward.
(This review is of the Kindle 2021 edition which has an afterword that covers new developments into 2022.)
Top reviews from other countries
- Jerry WitkowiczReviewed in Canada on October 16, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars An eye opener to our future possibilities and challenges
If you are young and still in the planning stages of your career, this is a must read for you. The choices you make or the path you pick will be and to some extent is already strongly influenced by AI. We will all be impacted by AI in the next 5 to 10 years or sooner. There are great benefits and potentially serious concerns that we will face with AI. This book is an eye opener to what's ahead of us and how AI will impact us. It's a must read.
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ROGER MEDINA TURONReviewed in Mexico on September 8, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Al grano
Muy buen libro
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MOISESReviewed in Brazil on November 11, 2022
4.0 out of 5 stars Livro é quase um oráculo para questões futuras!
Apesar de não haver tradução em Português, é um livro que trata os assuntos dos impactos da Inteligência Artificial com muita sobriedade de honestidade, sem visões distópicas! Monta e discute o que já temos hoje em dia até cenários futuros envolvendo a Segurança Internacional!
- RR WallerReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive
Published in 2022, it has obviously been overtaken by many rapid developments in AI but in most areas it is still very relevant, thought-provoking and timely, especially given its writers’ abilities to see the wider picture.
A few of the chapter headings provide an insight into their level of thought - national, international and existential:
Chapter 3: From Turing to Today - and Beyond
Chapter 4: Global Network Platforms
Chapter 5: Security and World Order
Chapter 6: AI and Human Identity
My edition: paperback, John Murray, 2022, ISBN 978-1-529-37999-2
Recommended
- ValdoReviewed in Spain on October 27, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting