Welcome to AI by David Shrier provides a past, present, and future perspective on artificial intelligence: the good, the bad, and the scary.
Everyone is talking about AI. For decades I’ve paid attention to how artificial intelligence could impact my work, first as a software engineer and then as a business strategist. And yet, AI is changing so rapidly that even I at times struggle to get my arms around what it is and how it will change our work and our lives. Welcome to AI seeks to step into this gap.
The book is divided into three parts, roughly chronological with the first part more backwards looking, the second focused on decisions we can make today, and the third part focused on different potential futures. Not surprisingly, given the challenges of predicting the future in a rapidly changing discipline, the first part is the strongest and most helpful.
Overall the book is very readable. And yet at times it was very hard to read. The odd combination of the author’s hard criticisms of institutions he doesn’t like, over-confidence in institutions he does, alarmist warnings of coming doom, and rose-colored confidence in humanity and technology to perfectly do what is right challenges his credibility, at least in this reviewer’s eyes. There were several times I just wanted to put the book down without finishing it.
Despite those challenges, the book still has its merits. For those with limited understanding of the technology, Welcome to AI, provides a decent introduction. Perhaps more importantly, the strong positions that the author takes on important topics force readers to think about what each of us believe on those topics. The more the book rests on the author’s shaky future predictions (the AI future at this point in time is just too unpredictable), the harder it is to trust the author’s conclusions, but even his flawed perspectives help us realize how important it is to have a perspective.
If you are worried that your lack of informed perspective on artificial intelligence has kept you on the periphery of important discussions and decisions, Welcome to AI may be a great place to start to change that.