dptillman's review against another edition
The non fiction sections are interesting but the short stories don’t do it for me, couldn’t get into them
hussainweb's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This is a long book for what it purportedly sets out to do, but it is enjoyable. Each of the ten stories is well written. While not sophisticated stories, they have enough depth to be enjoyable while delivering the vision of the future. Each of the stories is followed by an explanation of the various technologies and how they work (at an overview level) and also the non-technical aspects such as bias, economics, social impact, etc.
If you’re interested in the wide world of the AI, this would be a very interesting read for you.
If you’re interested in the wide world of the AI, this would be a very interesting read for you.
cmrani30's review against another edition
2.0
Interesting to see predictions so off after only 1 year.
ruben_franz's review against another edition
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
Disclaimer: Reviewer is not a native speaker. Read in German translation (Thorsten Schmidt)
An important book. Because it deals with a relevant topic in a meaningful and thoughtful way.
The linking of SF stories and the corresponding technical explanations and prognoses is clever and strategically positioned. A clear stylistic closeness to Liu Cixin cannot be overlooked for me, though of course one has to be careful here as I have not read either of them in their respective original languages, but only in translations, which leaves this statement on very German feet.
I'm not a big fan of the introductory "blurb" for each story and the references to later stories within the explainer sections. This may be because I have the impression that this way I cannot read the stories with an open mind and be completely surprised, which for me is an important part of my reading experience. From my point of view, it seems as if Kai-Fu Lee wanted to put his stamp on the book in as many places as possible, which is rather detrimental to the quality and independence of the Quifan Chen parts. I consider the selection and variety of AI forms and application areas covered to be one of the great strengths, as one gets a lot of food for thought and lines of development.
I read the book as part of a book club and the resulting discussions are for me the decisive plus point for this book.
A clear recommendation for all those who are still looking for a book for their own book club. Also a recommendation for those interested in technology and sci-fi enthusiasts. Basically, I am even convinced that the topic is so relevant and needs such a comprehensive social engagement that I would even recommend it to everyone, regardless of their technical background. The inclusive and varied format makes it eminently suitable for this.
Not a recommendation for anyone who doesn't like to be lectured to or is unteachable.
An important book. Because it deals with a relevant topic in a meaningful and thoughtful way.
The linking of SF stories and the corresponding technical explanations and prognoses is clever and strategically positioned. A clear stylistic closeness to Liu Cixin cannot be overlooked for me, though of course one has to be careful here as I have not read either of them in their respective original languages, but only in translations, which leaves this statement on very German feet.
I'm not a big fan of the introductory "blurb" for each story and the references to later stories within the explainer sections. This may be because I have the impression that this way I cannot read the stories with an open mind and be completely surprised, which for me is an important part of my reading experience. From my point of view, it seems as if Kai-Fu Lee wanted to put his stamp on the book in as many places as possible, which is rather detrimental to the quality and independence of the Quifan Chen parts. I consider the selection and variety of AI forms and application areas covered to be one of the great strengths, as one gets a lot of food for thought and lines of development.
I read the book as part of a book club and the resulting discussions are for me the decisive plus point for this book.
A clear recommendation for all those who are still looking for a book for their own book club. Also a recommendation for those interested in technology and sci-fi enthusiasts. Basically, I am even convinced that the topic is so relevant and needs such a comprehensive social engagement that I would even recommend it to everyone, regardless of their technical background. The inclusive and varied format makes it eminently suitable for this.
Not a recommendation for anyone who doesn't like to be lectured to or is unteachable.
jennundersea's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
ktwedd's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
asinglebird's review against another edition
3.0
Proper review coming soon! Mixed feelings about this one. The story Twin Sparrows' was a highlight at least!
kettlepot's review against another edition
5.0
Interesting mix of stories from the future with explanations behind the technology that will propel us to that future, for better or worse... It's equally inspirational as it is a warning.
lenzen's review against another edition
3.0
A Decent Introduction but Somewhat Sanguine
Overview
Like many people, I was caught off guard by how advanced chatbots had become when GPT-4 was released in March of this year. Indeed, it is now the number one topic of conversation in both tech and financial circles. Wanting to get better up to speed, I remembered this book, written by former Google employees involved in their AI efforts, which was recommended by Ray Dalio in his social media posts.
The book approaches the subject primarily through presenting 10 short stories, written by Chen Qiufan. Each is preceded by a brief introduction by Kai-Fu Lee and is followed by a more detailed analysis also by Lee.
The Short Stories
The short stories cover many areas of AI such as: deep learning, natural language processing, augmented and virtual reality, along with autonomous vehicles and weapons. Quantum Computing, although having much broader applications than AI, is also discussed. Beyond just discussing the raw technology, the short stories also delve into the societal implications of AI: both its promises and its perils. Example themes include: what will losing jobs to AI feel like to those who lose them? How can AI work directly towards making humans happy and what must it avoid when doing that?
In general, I spend little time reading fiction: only a classic here and there. I am, thus, far from a science fiction connoisseur. I am somewhat more open to sci-fi movies, but, still, only the real classics: the original three of the Star Wars series, Blade Runner, and the first couple of Terminators. Thus, I may not be the best person to comment on the quality of the science fiction. With these qualifications out the way, my thoughts on the short stories are:
Although none of the short stories were terrible, I only found one, “Quantum Genocide”, to be highly engaging. The others run the whole spectrum from “quite boring” for “The Holy Driver” to “pretty interesting but somewhat cheesy” for “Contactless Love”. The former deals with autonomous vehicles, while the latter deals with AI in medical care.
My broad observations were that when reading the short stories I did not find that they added much beyond their introduction and analysis by Lee. In many cases, I found myself bored, wanting to jump straight to the analysis, but feeling compelled not to miss anything. That being said, the trend is that the quality of the stories does improve the farther you get into the book. This includes becoming more interesting as the themes are of things on a grander scale.
Overall, I would rate the short stories by themselves 3 out of 5. Unfortunately, there are many 2’s in that rating and only “Contactless Love” and “Quantum Genocide” rate a 4 and a 5, respectively.
The Analyses
Although it takes slogging through the short stories to get to it, I found Lee’s analysis to be much more engaging. He gives a decent introduction to the key AI technologies. Even more interestingly, I enjoyed his discussion of Quantum Computing and decided that is a subject I wanted to follow up on. None of the technologies are discussed at a deep technical level, there is certainly no math, but everything seems concise and accurate.
Besides giving introductions to the technologies, Lee discusses, at length, the societal implications. Here he is particularly concerned with a coming onslaught of “deep fakes” (my phrase, not his); how society will deal with a situation in which many people will lose their jobs; and how some of the foundations of economic theory, such as scarcity, will be rattled to the core. In particular, Lee argues that the latter will necessitate a new social contract.
In general, Lee does give time to both the dire and optimistic predictions. In some cases, he does not water down the implications. A prime example is his discussion of autonomous vehicles turning 'trolley problems' into reality. Here he presents it as what if your car has to choose between saving your child as a lone occupant and some number of random strangers. How should the car be programmed?
Although clearly aware of the dire scenarios and generally giving at least some mention to them, Lee clearly leans toward thinking everything will all work out in the end. He is trying to be fair, by no means has his head in the sand, and is trying to present the dire scenarios. Despite this, I thought there were some big important, dire themes that he missed. For example, he discusses the promise of AI in education. In this case it seems like almost all roses. One thing Lee misses, however, is the potential AI has to be used for political indoctrination and to find out too much about children early on: For example, who is showing signs of being a budding leader of dissenting [insert ideology here]?
In general, Lee seems to trust that AI is something that governments will make benevolent decisions about with, perhaps, only unintended consequences. There is some mention of social credit systems by Lee. Quifan also hints at the question of what happens to those who do not wish to participate in the new order in “The Holy Driver”. Overall the political dangers do not seem to discussed adequately, however.
The Central Problem
One reason I am not a big fan of science fiction is the recurring theme that humans possess qualities that robots and other species in the universe simply cannot replicate. In this book this manifests itself as Lee’s optimism that there will be jobs for humans since AI cannot match us in terms of creativity, strategic thinking and empathy. One of the most surprising things to many recently, however, is just how good AI has become in areas emphasizing creativity. This is particularly true of art, although its abilities in music are steadily gaining good reviews. It is quite surprising that GPT-4 seems to be even better in creative artistic endeavors which are “fuzzier” than in dealing creatively with more concrete mathematical problems.
Similarly, Lee, to some degree, ends up arguing against his own point when he points out how AI has now become better than average humans at reading emotions from looking a pictures of people. When interacting with chatbot users some, including me, are starting to note that GPT is gaining the ability to feel your mood. For example, Bing, which is now powered by GPT-4, will now ask you to restart conversations if it feels you are being curt with it. If you are talking to it about work you feel proud of, it seems clearly programmed to be encouraging.
Finally, Lee also does not spend much time discussing situations when AI blows up spectacularly other than to say it does not happen that often and we have to weigh that against all the times it is right. It was after this book was written, but the general optimism that some, like the authors, feel about AI might mean its security is not adequately analyzed. For instance, researchers recently discovered hacks to trick GPT into giving instructions for car jacking and bomb building.
Overall I give Lee’s analysis a 4 out of 5.
Conclusion
The book seems to be targeted at those who enjoy science fiction and who are seeking a general introduction to the technology behind AI and its societal implications. It is written by authors who clearly believe that the promise of AI outweighs its perils. It is good to hear their perspective.
The authors do not have their heads in the sand. Most of the book, indeed, discusses the perils of AI. Despite this, there were enough omissions that I felt the perils were still not adequately discussed.
Finally, I did not find that the fiction added much beyond what was discussed in the analyses. Some, but not all, of it was boring. Although the book’s manner of presentation might work for others, I would have preferred some of the space devoted to the fiction to have been spent exploring the perils of AI even more deeply instead.
Overview
Like many people, I was caught off guard by how advanced chatbots had become when GPT-4 was released in March of this year. Indeed, it is now the number one topic of conversation in both tech and financial circles. Wanting to get better up to speed, I remembered this book, written by former Google employees involved in their AI efforts, which was recommended by Ray Dalio in his social media posts.
The book approaches the subject primarily through presenting 10 short stories, written by Chen Qiufan. Each is preceded by a brief introduction by Kai-Fu Lee and is followed by a more detailed analysis also by Lee.
The Short Stories
The short stories cover many areas of AI such as: deep learning, natural language processing, augmented and virtual reality, along with autonomous vehicles and weapons. Quantum Computing, although having much broader applications than AI, is also discussed. Beyond just discussing the raw technology, the short stories also delve into the societal implications of AI: both its promises and its perils. Example themes include: what will losing jobs to AI feel like to those who lose them? How can AI work directly towards making humans happy and what must it avoid when doing that?
In general, I spend little time reading fiction: only a classic here and there. I am, thus, far from a science fiction connoisseur. I am somewhat more open to sci-fi movies, but, still, only the real classics: the original three of the Star Wars series, Blade Runner, and the first couple of Terminators. Thus, I may not be the best person to comment on the quality of the science fiction. With these qualifications out the way, my thoughts on the short stories are:
Although none of the short stories were terrible, I only found one, “Quantum Genocide”, to be highly engaging. The others run the whole spectrum from “quite boring” for “The Holy Driver” to “pretty interesting but somewhat cheesy” for “Contactless Love”. The former deals with autonomous vehicles, while the latter deals with AI in medical care.
My broad observations were that when reading the short stories I did not find that they added much beyond their introduction and analysis by Lee. In many cases, I found myself bored, wanting to jump straight to the analysis, but feeling compelled not to miss anything. That being said, the trend is that the quality of the stories does improve the farther you get into the book. This includes becoming more interesting as the themes are of things on a grander scale.
Overall, I would rate the short stories by themselves 3 out of 5. Unfortunately, there are many 2’s in that rating and only “Contactless Love” and “Quantum Genocide” rate a 4 and a 5, respectively.
The Analyses
Although it takes slogging through the short stories to get to it, I found Lee’s analysis to be much more engaging. He gives a decent introduction to the key AI technologies. Even more interestingly, I enjoyed his discussion of Quantum Computing and decided that is a subject I wanted to follow up on. None of the technologies are discussed at a deep technical level, there is certainly no math, but everything seems concise and accurate.
Besides giving introductions to the technologies, Lee discusses, at length, the societal implications. Here he is particularly concerned with a coming onslaught of “deep fakes” (my phrase, not his); how society will deal with a situation in which many people will lose their jobs; and how some of the foundations of economic theory, such as scarcity, will be rattled to the core. In particular, Lee argues that the latter will necessitate a new social contract.
In general, Lee does give time to both the dire and optimistic predictions. In some cases, he does not water down the implications. A prime example is his discussion of autonomous vehicles turning 'trolley problems' into reality. Here he presents it as what if your car has to choose between saving your child as a lone occupant and some number of random strangers. How should the car be programmed?
Although clearly aware of the dire scenarios and generally giving at least some mention to them, Lee clearly leans toward thinking everything will all work out in the end. He is trying to be fair, by no means has his head in the sand, and is trying to present the dire scenarios. Despite this, I thought there were some big important, dire themes that he missed. For example, he discusses the promise of AI in education. In this case it seems like almost all roses. One thing Lee misses, however, is the potential AI has to be used for political indoctrination and to find out too much about children early on: For example, who is showing signs of being a budding leader of dissenting [insert ideology here]?
In general, Lee seems to trust that AI is something that governments will make benevolent decisions about with, perhaps, only unintended consequences. There is some mention of social credit systems by Lee. Quifan also hints at the question of what happens to those who do not wish to participate in the new order in “The Holy Driver”. Overall the political dangers do not seem to discussed adequately, however.
The Central Problem
One reason I am not a big fan of science fiction is the recurring theme that humans possess qualities that robots and other species in the universe simply cannot replicate. In this book this manifests itself as Lee’s optimism that there will be jobs for humans since AI cannot match us in terms of creativity, strategic thinking and empathy. One of the most surprising things to many recently, however, is just how good AI has become in areas emphasizing creativity. This is particularly true of art, although its abilities in music are steadily gaining good reviews. It is quite surprising that GPT-4 seems to be even better in creative artistic endeavors which are “fuzzier” than in dealing creatively with more concrete mathematical problems.
Similarly, Lee, to some degree, ends up arguing against his own point when he points out how AI has now become better than average humans at reading emotions from looking a pictures of people. When interacting with chatbot users some, including me, are starting to note that GPT is gaining the ability to feel your mood. For example, Bing, which is now powered by GPT-4, will now ask you to restart conversations if it feels you are being curt with it. If you are talking to it about work you feel proud of, it seems clearly programmed to be encouraging.
Finally, Lee also does not spend much time discussing situations when AI blows up spectacularly other than to say it does not happen that often and we have to weigh that against all the times it is right. It was after this book was written, but the general optimism that some, like the authors, feel about AI might mean its security is not adequately analyzed. For instance, researchers recently discovered hacks to trick GPT into giving instructions for car jacking and bomb building.
Overall I give Lee’s analysis a 4 out of 5.
Conclusion
The book seems to be targeted at those who enjoy science fiction and who are seeking a general introduction to the technology behind AI and its societal implications. It is written by authors who clearly believe that the promise of AI outweighs its perils. It is good to hear their perspective.
The authors do not have their heads in the sand. Most of the book, indeed, discusses the perils of AI. Despite this, there were enough omissions that I felt the perils were still not adequately discussed.
Finally, I did not find that the fiction added much beyond what was discussed in the analyses. Some, but not all, of it was boring. Although the book’s manner of presentation might work for others, I would have preferred some of the space devoted to the fiction to have been spent exploring the perils of AI even more deeply instead.
nessieread's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5