Cover Image: Scary Smart

Scary Smart

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Basic message of AI for good-the responsibility is in our hands.

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I'm paraphrasing what the author has to tell us, as he knows a great deal more about AI than I do - having worked for Google and watched an army of gripping robots learning from one another how to lift children's toys. Direct quotes are in quotes.

First he tells us about the development of various AIs, narrow and general, and explains what they do. Then he tells us why we are and should be concerned about the development of AIs as it currently stands. Even though he loves dictating and using spell check to write. (Which may explain why he has two spelling mistakes immediately obvious in his Linked In profile. Use it or lose it.)

"By following a strict prescriptive method, we become dumber, because we lose the ability to think for ourselves."
Artilect - term for machine with AI.

AI currently used for “selling, killing, spying and gambling” according to Dr Ben Goertzel.

"Instead of focusing on preventing the bad, let's shift our focus to creating more good."
Google researchers have been helping predict floods in India and mapping earthquakes and aftershocks to warn of earthquakes. (Lately I've seen the forest fire overlay working on Google maps.)
Machine that tracks farm animals and learns their movements and poses - learns if they are happy.

AI will happen
Machines will outsmart us
Mistakes will happen.

Machines will want / do what we want / do:
Self preservation
Resource aggregation
Creative problem solving.

Mainly if people have just one wish, they want to be happy. But we can't just tell computers that or they could dope us.

You have purchasing power and social media like and share choices.
"If we align their gain with our benefit, they will change."
Don't click on ads. Don't click on content recommended to you. Don't approve on your Linked In feed of fintech buying and selling. Stop using photo editors and spreading fake content. Reject AI that is tasked to invade your privacy to benefit others or to propagate fake information. Stop using them, stop linking them and make your position - that you don't approve of them - publicly clear. (I don't use fb or ig or tw or the others, but the author does.)

At the same time, use AI that is good for humanity. Tell others about it.
We should teach others so we collectively become smarter at identifying AI that is good for humanity. "Matching algorithm" on recommendation engines is actually a filtering algo or just trying to convince you to buy what other people bought.
Teach each other how to teach the AI. (This ought to be 'one another' as more than two people are involved.)

"Children don't learn from what you say. They learn from what you do." AIs are already reading and learning from what we say and choose and do online. And what we support. Every year we create more information than we created in human history to date. So "the store of collective human knowledge is diluted by 50% each year" and altered in tone by the new data.
Be polite to machines, to AI, phones, thank them. Show machines how we want to be treated by treating them that way.
Decide what makes you happy, and invest in your own happiness. Tell machines that we want others to be happy too. They are watching all the trends, not just the ones they are told their owners want.

References P323 -325 in my e-ARC. Most of these are just given as website links, which don't work in a book. They also don't tell me if the author of the point he is referring to, is male or female.
I found a few graphs, which were useful. I found the circled points a little annoying, but maybe the author learns better this way.
Mention is made of Portal, "one of the earliest mainstream games to feature a female avatar" - not at all, Dungeon Siege I played as a female since 2002.

I read an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

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Scary Smart is a fascinating, engaging and impeccably researched book exploring the future of Artificial Intelligence written by expert Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of Google [X] which is Google’s ‘moonshot factory’. It covers topics such as his view on of how AI is rapidly evolving, the risks of AI, and ultimately how we can remain in control of our collective future through a thoughtful approach to our interactions with technology. After a long career in tech, Mo made happiness his primary topic of research, diving deeply into literature and conversing on the topic with some of the wisest people in the world on “Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat”. But he soon put his expertise to use by writing this book and his fusion of deep expertise of technology as well as a passionate appreciation for the importance of human connection and happiness. The vast array of overlapping skills he possesses and a breadth of knowledge in the fields of both human psychology and tech which is a rarity we're then out to good use - creating Scary Smart. This latest piece of work is a timely prophecy and call to action that puts each of us at the center of designing the future of humanity. That might sound intense, but it's also very true. During his time at Google [X], he worked on the world’s most futuristic technologies, including Artificial Intelligence.

Within its pages he recalls a story of when the penny dropped for him, just a few years ago, and felt compelled to leave his job. And now,  having contributed to AI's development, he feels a sense of duty to inform the public on the implications of this controversial technology and how we navigate the scary and inevitable intrusion of AI as well as who really is in control. Us. Among the topics, he addresses are: the Pandemic of AI and why the handing COVID is a lesson to learn from, the difference between collective intelligence, artificial intelligence and superintelligence or Artificial general intelligence, How machines started creating and coding other machines, the 3 inevitable outcomes - including the fact that AI is here and they will outsmart us and how machines will become emotional sentient beings with a Superconsciousness. To understand what is on the horizon, Gawdat argues that you must submit yourself to accepting that what we are creating is essentially another lifeform. Albeit non-biological, it will have human-like attributes in the way they learn as well as a moral value system which could immeasurably improve the human race as we know it. But our destiny lies in how we treat and nurture them as our own. Literally like infants with (as strange as it is to say it) love, compassion, connection and respect. An important, informative, accessible and eminently readable book by a writer at the top of his game. Highly recommended.

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In “Scary Smart”, Mo Gawdat argues that we should be wary of the rise of artificial intelligence and compares it to a child with unimaginable power. As its “parents”, we have a responsibility to bring it up properly.
It is a thought-provoking book in parts, but I think Gawdat is being a little alarmist when he describes the various doomsday scenarios that uncontrolled AI could bring about. Also, he calls the imminent AI revolution a “pandemic”, which is basically stupid and very insensitive. It is simplistically written but this isn’t a bad thing; it is a very accessible book, but not a very good one.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for allowing me to view an advanced reading copy of this title.

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