Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future
Jeremy Kahn
Simon & Schuster (July 2024)
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 Perfection (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 makes a brilliant, substantial contribution to the business world at a time when it is much more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can remember. Bravo!
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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.