AI Snake Oil - BookWyrm

320 pages

English language

Published 2024 by Princeton University Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-691-24913-1

(2 reviews)

From two of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI, what you need to know about AI--and how to defend yourself against bogus AI claims and products

Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You're not alone. AI is everywhere--and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn't, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil--products that don't work, and probably never will.

While acknowledging the potential of some AI, such as ChatGPT, AI Snake Oil uncovers rampant misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is …

From two of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI, what you need to know about AI--and how to defend yourself against bogus AI claims and products

Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You're not alone. AI is everywhere--and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn't, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil--products that don't work, and probably never will.

While acknowledging the potential of some AI, such as ChatGPT, AI Snake Oil uncovers rampant misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is already causing in how it's being built, marketed, and used in areas such as education, medicine, hiring, banking, insurance, and criminal justice. The book explains the crucial differences between types of AI, why organizations are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can't fix social media, why AI isn't an existential risk, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. The book also warns of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

By revealing AI's limits and real risks, AI Snake Oil will help you make better decisions about whether and how to use AI at work and home.

2 editions

Cade reviewed AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan

Good intro for the average person, doesn't cover everything AI related.

5 stars

This is a pretty good primer on a few different AI technologies by experts in the field who are generally positive about AI development. It provided a good contrast to the (well-researched) generally negative videos and articles I had seen on the topic so far.

The best part of the book is the extended metaphor in the introduction, comparing the term "AI" to the term "vehicle". Vehicle is a category covering everything from bikes to trucks to space rockets to boats, but if we didn't have separate terms for all those things, we couldn't have meaningful conversations about them, especially their benefits and harms. This is one of the big problems we are running into with discussing "AI" now.

I found the section on predictive AI excellent. It's essentially the core of the book and was really informative since I knew next to nothing about that.

On the other hand, …

This is a pretty good primer on a few different AI technologies by experts in the field who are generally positive about AI development. It provided a good contrast to the (well-researched) generally negative videos and articles I had seen on the topic so far.

The best part of the book is the extended metaphor in the introduction, comparing the term "AI" to the term "vehicle". Vehicle is a category covering everything from bikes to trucks to space rockets to boats, but if we didn't have separate terms for all those things, we couldn't have meaningful conversations about them, especially their benefits and harms. This is one of the big problems we are running into with discussing "AI" now.

I found the section on predictive AI excellent. It's essentially the core of the book and was really informative since I knew next to nothing about that.

On the other hand, because I already had learned a lot about generative AI (language models, image generators, etc.), that part of the book wasn't too helpful to me and I skimmed a lot of it.

tlariv

rated it

Nov 26