About the Book
Self-learning machines called AIs are popping up all around us. They’re real, and really important. They’re affecting our lives—as workers, consumers, investors, citizens, patients and students. AIs bring huge promise, but also existential risk. The biggest risk isn’t killer robots—it’s the renegade leaders, despots, and unrestrained hackers everywhere we should worry about.
Charles Jennings’ insightful new book, Artificial Intelligence: The Rise of the Lightspeed Learners presents sides of AI most people have never even considered before. That surprises are a main product of AIs. That AI cybersecurity is much more critical than traditional IT security. That, as Vladimir Putin put it, “the country that leads in AI will control the world.” Jennings blends insights into Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and Beijing with insider AI stories, irreverent humor and strong opinions. He explores the global AI ecosystem from Cambridge to Beijing; and provides a stark assessment of AI activity in China—where he lived for two years working with senior government officials. He claims that the U.S. and China are in an AI horserace that will be the most important technology contest ever, with the outcome still very much in doubt.
Consisting of stories, musings, interviews, and more, it provides a timely and accessible explanation of AI and its key issues to the general reading public.
Table of Contents:
CHAPTER 1:An Uncanny Ability to Learn
CHAPTER 2: Not Your Father’s AI
CHAPTER 3: The Singularity Games
CHAPTER 4: Truckin’ in Flip Flops
CHAPTER 5: Ben Franklin’s Purse
CHAPTER 6: A Modest Proposal
CHAPTER 7: Uncle Sam vs. Red Star
CHAPTER 8: The Porn Star’s Deepfake, and Other Security Paradoxes
CHAPTER 9: AIs in the Government Henhouse
CHAPTER 10: The AI Casino
CHAPTER 11: Artificially Intelligent Poetry?
CHAPTER 12: The Way Forward
About the Author :
Charles Jennings is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and speaker who has been starting and running growth organizations for over 40 years. He was founder or CEO of three successful Internet companies launched in the 1990s. Jennings has written several books on technology, including the seminal work, The Hundredth Window: Protecting Your Privacy and Security In the Age of the Internet (2000), which was translated into five languages. Jennings has been a regular newspaper columnist (for the Seattle Times, and others); from 2014-2017, Jennings served as CEO of NeuralEye—an AI company set up to transfer technology from Caltech/JPL to the commercial market. Jennings is an experienced and entertaining public speaker whose credits range from his TEDx talk, “From Armadillos to Monkeys,” to a keynote at the UN 50th Anniversary Conference on the Declaration of Human Rights in Toulouse, France. Jennings is still an active keynoter on AI at conferences around the world. Jennings has long been a thought leader in Internet trust and security. He was a delegate to the Nobel Technology Summit in Oslo, and named by Federal Computing Week as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Government technology. He’s a recipient of the prestigious lifetime achievement award of the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, and was also the subject of a major feature story in Wired magazine (December 2005 issue).
Review :
Artificial intelligence allows computers to outplay grandmasters in chess and Go, make stock-trading decisions, and operate self-driving cars, performing these tasks far faster than even the speediest human. Jennings, a prominent tech entrepreneur and no stranger to disruptive technologies, predicts that AI will shape the future. Looking at the projected shifts that could take place by mid-century, he warns readers that the U.S. is unprepared for the imminent transformation. 'The fact that the United States still, late into the second decade of the twenty-first century, has no national plan for AI is both remarkable and negligent.' With Canada and China investing heavily in AI, the U.S. is still in a position to take the lead with the right investments, but the gap is widening fast. To better prepare, he advocates for every American to learn about superpowerful AI, which could soon be controlling our phones, guiding us through taxes and laws, and changing the way we learn and work. With ardent urgency, Jennings explains how AIs have the potential to remake the world, and what we should be doing to prepare.
Tech entrepreneur Jennings brings pragmatism, humor, and a dash of self-inflation to this convincing plea for Americans to inform themselves about and engage politically with the inevitable rise of what he calls Machina sapiens. Based on his view that artificial intelligence can be a net positive for humanity—provided it’s managed correctly—Jennings warns against leaving decisions up to irresponsible parties, among whom he includes rogue states, the Chinese government, and Big Tech. Finding the U.S.’s lack of a national AI policy 'both remarkable and negligent,' Jennings calls for a 'new American technology story,' in which development is spearheaded not by private companies but by the federal government, possibly using independent monitoring bodies similar to the Atomic Energy Commission. He also brainstorms ideas for new entrepreneurial tools, encourages state and city governments to crank up AI-centered economic development, and, in general, leans his optimism on the potential of well-informed, self-directed individuals—he points to trucking and security as examples of American business sectors approaching AI with positivity rather than fear. . . . [Jennings] provides a substantial framework to support readers’ thinking about tech regulation.
Highly Recommended - Jennings, well known in the field of AI, looks at key AI issues humanity will face in the coming decades. One of his main themes is that AI-based technologies will be unpredictable and risky, a position he supports with extensive examples and research by leading scientists. Like many other high-impact technologies, AI will be impossible to control. Even if such control were possible, scientists do not know how to implement limiting mechanisms. For example, the implementation of ethical systems is notoriously difficult. Jennings discusses in detail work funded by governments of many countries to strengthen artificial intelligence research. The AI clock is ticking increasingly fast, and the existential AI crisis major governments face is undeniable. Jennings discusses how AI impacts economies, military organizations, business, and education. Many possible scenarios are dystopian. According to some visionaries, the AI explosion that will create unimaginable powers—aka the singularity event—will happen at the end of the next decade. On the plus side, one of the brightest areas of AI application will be in education, where smart algorithms will figure out how to teach most effectively. Both important and highly entertaining, this volume will be valuable to anyone interested in current and future political and technological issues.
