A review by adamhecktman
Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley--Making AI Serve Us All by Greg Shaw, Kevin Scott

5.0

When I picked this up, I thought it was going to be a more digitally fluent version of Hillbilly Elegy (maybe because the forward was by J. D. Vance). Could not have been more wrong, and I thought that this was the most thoughtful treatment on the subject of Artificial Intelligence that I have read. Unlike the others, it is not a treatise on why we should fear AI as a job-destroying tool of a technocracy. Nor is it a doe-eyed view that AI will bring us a nirvana where the robots do all the work. Through story telling, simple-to-understand frameworks, and thoughtful proposals, this is a book about how how AI can expand the pie - if we engage and pay attention. It is about how we can use AI to feed a world and make healthcare accessible to all - if we engage and pay attention. And about how AI can bring new jobs that add new value while closing existing gaps...if we engage and pay attention. He has guidance for those who are building AI, those who are using AI, and those who are regulating AI. And, if you happen to be looking for a beautifully accessible way of understand what AI is and how it works, that alone makes this a wonderful read. I'll be thinking about this one for some time.