Public fascination with artificial intelligence (AI) has only increased since this book was published in 2021. AI technologies, such as Chat GPT, have entered mainstream society and are being used in everyday business work. Publicly, however, leaders from philosophy, business, and government do not appear yet ready to grapple with the deep human questions involved. For example, when do we defer to AI bots over human agency? Are we ready for AI tools of war – both offensively and defensively? How will this affect how we view ourselves as creatures of reason? In this book, Henry Kissinger, a dean at MIT Daniel Huttenlocher, and the CEO of Google Eric Schmidt grapple with similar issues at length.

The depth of thought in this work cannot be contained in a short book review. Needless to say, they cover the foreseeable issues through a historical lens. AI technology seems to portend an epochal transition in human civilization, much like the advent of the printing press. A big distinction is between assistive AI, under human direction, and autonomous AI, which directs us. Also in this realm, the prospect of artificial general intelligence – that is, a sentient computer or android – looms large and frighteningly realistic.

AI can apply to many fields of human activity, like the military, healthcare, business, education, and scientific research. These examples and more are explicitly examined throughout this book. Not all are good, however. The prospect of AI weapons scares me deeply. United States policy is not to develop autonomous weapons, but what about other countries? Is there any plausible way to defend against such war? It seems inevitable that someone is going to try using such a weapon eventually, even if they are a rogue terrorist group. Do we have to go through another World War I to learn our lesson?

This book offers more intelligent questions than firm answers, and that is the authors’ apparent intention. We are at the early stages of mainstream adoption of this technology, and questions abound while certainty is scarce. As such, reading this socially focused book behooves anyone interested in seriously forecasting the repercussions on the world. I develop software for a living, on the micro-level, so a treatment like this on the macro-level is helpful to see coding’s impact down the road. My experience tells me that the issues raised are spot-on, and the treatment is even and balanced. As humans, are we ready for this? No, but reading this book will make a reader more prepared. ( )

Although this book seems to be more a collection of disjointed chapters put together hastily by the three authors, I did enjoy the ways in which the developments and current state of AI were juxtaposed with the start of the first World War, Enlightenment thinking and philosophy in general.

I would have left out chapter 4 though as it is very poorly written and does not contribute much to the rest of the book. ( )

Reading this book right after _The Alignment Problem_ made it seem like a lightweight work indeed. (And who'd a thunk the venerable "Henry the K" would co-author a new AI book?) It centralizes the general concept of "AI-enabled global network platforms" such as Google and Uber, as well as the technology's geopolitical/military implications. The later chapters are more philosophical. Although the book is pretty silent on the privacy problem and what Crawford's _Atlas of AI_ calls AI's highly extractive nature, the gravity of the issues it does discuss means that it is not so lightweight after all.