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Gawdat’s writing style is also a plus. It’s conversational, which means it’s like sitting down with a friend (albeit a very informed one) for a chat about the future. There’s no heavy academic jargon here, and I truly appreciated that. It made the reading experience fluid and engaging. One of the shining aspects of the book is the focus on ethics. In the vast AI literature, ethics is a topic that often feels either neglected or glossed over. Gawdat, however, prioritizes it. He touches on the importance of making conscious decisions now about how we design, use, and regulate AI. Rather than presenting a doomsday scenario, he offers solutions and paths we might take to ensure AI is a boon, not a bane.
Despite the fact that none of that shit EVER seems to pan out, he REALLY seems to know what he’s talking about. The author, Mo Gawdat is the former director of Google X, the “infamous” Xerox Park/DARPA style “moonshot factory” where Goole researches and develops their more leading edge stuff like: 1. Waymo: Googles self-driving car project thing. 2. Google Glass: googles early attempt at smart glasses. 3. Wing: googles drone delivery project. And 4. Project Makani: An effort to generate electricity using airborne wind turbines.While the book can be a little dry at times, and some points may be repeated excessively, it is a worthwhile read accessible to many readers. The book presents a balanced view of AI’s potential benefits and dangers and provides a roadmap to ensure that AI development aligns with our values and priorities. Google X under Gawdat was DEEPLY invested in AI and Quantum Computing. The intersection of which is where all the SERIOUS concerns come from. Nearly 20 years ago, the movie "I, Robot" warned of an impending robot revolution powered by artificial intelligence that views humanity as "scum." Now, what was once science fiction has become a paramount concern for tech executives and futurists. Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer for Google's secretive research and development lab "X," joins CBS News to discuss the future of AI. It’s hard to remember how different life was before smart phones. That is, until the internet goes out and you have like NOTHING happening, and you can’t tolerate existing. Apple podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-diary-of-a-ceo-by-steven-bartlett/id1291423644
The arguments he makes for his cautious optimism are WEAK, and nowhere NEAR as compelling as his arguments for his concerns. In fact, the reason I’m deducting 2 points from this otherwise pretty entertaining, engaging and thought provoking book is because the solution Gawdat proposes is (for me) deeply unsatisfying, and about equally as implausible. And according to Gowat, even without QC, AI is hitting an inflection point, where it is self improving, whereby the law of doubling (exponential sigmoid shaped growth). But the addition of QC means that AI will likely be BILLIONS of times more intelligent that humans, within our lifetime. The book’s first part can be quite unnerving as Mo explores the potential consequences of AI malfunctioning or being used maliciously. However, the book’s second parters a ray of hope, as Mo provides a blueprint for how we can teach ourselves and our machines to live better and preserve our species.When we ask computers to communicate, at first they communicate like we tell them, but if they're intelligent enough, they'll start to say, ‘that's too slow.’” The answer is us. Humans design the algorithms that define the way that AI works, and the processed information reflects an imperfect world. Does that mean we are doomed? In Scary Smart , Mo Gawdat, the internationally bestselling author of Solve for Happy , draws on his considerable expertise to answer this question and to show what we can all do now to teach ourselves and our machines how to live better. With more than thirty years' experience working at the cutting-edge of technology and his former role as chief business officer of Google [X], no one is better placed than Mo Gawdat to explain how the Artificial Intelligence of the future works. Or, it could be that this text was actually written (developed? Spawned?) by an AI bot which is why it was so sparsely referenced, simply circular and most annoyingly…
Scary Smart explores the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to upend (and perhaps even end) life as we know it. I could imagine the AI bot literally dredged up the fist half of the book’s section from a ‘doom and gloom of AI’ search and then the other half from ‘positive online mentality’ one. Then a chapter on love which you could have put in or taken from ANY self-development book of the last 20 years. I do not know if it’s because he’s a slave to the conversational style he used to create this (narrating rather than writing the book) which changes the feel utterly, and it does have shades of reading a transcript at times. If you consider the impact the the internet has had on our world over the past 30 years. It followed a sigmoid trajectory, whereby the it begins to be widely adopted around 1995, slowly ramps up in public interest, investment, adaptation and impact over the next 25 years with mass adaptation, and eventually levels off as the limits of our current tech paradigm are reached. There wasn’t much depth into topics: yes AI could be good or bad and it’s there in all the cliche ways you would expect.Overall, the book sheds light on a perspective of AI that evades most people! It discusses why the AI intelligent is totally different than the old "dumb" computers that only did speed processing according to what we give it as a work map, in terms of instructions, to the totally new Ai that could learn on its own and navigate towards its goal or mission! Including regulating our environment and economy and everything else computers currently do, and a whole lot more that we simply can’t predict, because we won’t be the ones inventing it or even making it anymore. Artificial intelligence is smarter than humans. It can process information at lightning speed and remain focused on specific tasks without distraction. AI can see into the future, predicting outcomes and even use sensors to see around physical and virtual corners. So why does AI frequently get it so wrong? I found a few graphs, which were useful. I found the circled points a little annoying, but maybe the author learns better this way. 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.
But according to Gowat, we’re at the beginning of a similar, but WAY more consequential sigmoid with AI. Sadly, the above is the only part of the book I found interesting. Portions of the book seem to obsess with sowing fear about the capabilities and problems of AI. The latter half suggests that all can be solved by following the golden rule, to treat others nicely and hope that future AI systems learn from us. The author often seems to anthromorphize AI into a lost child needing a guardian. Confusingly, he notes that nobody truly understands how AI works but seems to know the solution to the problem.
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I’m in education and have an interest in the (unsubstantiated) promise of AI for democratising learning, so read bits and pieces of articles online and that cursory reading covered everything I came across here. I really was expecting something new, critical or timely. But maybe this was for the ground Zero reader. Mo Gawdat is the former chief business officer for Google X and has built a monumental career in the tech industry working with the biggest names to reshape and reimagine the world as we know it. From IBM to Microsoft, Mo has lived at the cutting edge of technology and has taken a strong stance that AI is a bigger threat to humanity than global warming. By following a strict prescriptive method, we become dumber, because we lose the ability to think for ourselves." Now consider that AI will be WAY more dangerous and WAY less manageable and WAY WAY more profitable. Bias also seems apparent. Numerous comments gave me the impression that capitalism and the West in general are troubled environments that will endlessly develop AI to our peril. That may be, but it seems to widely ignore countries with other economic systems, and questionable leaders, that are investing heavily in AI systems as well for a wide range of purposes.
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