The Age of AI by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt & Daniel Huttenlocher
An interesting book. This hardly touches on the technology of AI, the focus is on how AI has, is and may impact on our society.
The main perception that the book proposes looks at the shift from an age of faith, when any inexplicable events or phenomena were attributed to god and a deeper understanding could be achieved through study (of god) and ritual, through the age of reason, where the human mind was elevated to a level where, with enough research, it could understand anything, towards a proposed age of AI where we may be forced to accept that AI can provide useful and valid knowledge but we may never be able to understand how it reached its deductions or conclusions.
The strength of the book, for me, lies in the way that it doesn’t foretell the future: it doesn’t tell us how AI will pan out, instead it gives possibilities and asks questions, questions that we, as a society, should try to address so that we can try to prepare for what is likely to come.
The first three chapters put the current situation into perspective, then a couple of chapters look at the impact AI can and will have on global platforms (think Facebook, TikTok) and on global security and militarisation. The last two chapters look at the future of AI and how it may change our perception of our own role in the world.
Reading this short book - 240 pages - has changed my view of AI from being (just) an exciting new technology to something that may eventually have an impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.