Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World / Parmy Olson. 4.5 stars

[LibraryCin]

4.5 stars

The subheading tells you generally what this is about, but it also includes some biographical information on two people who were working on getting AI to where it is today. They both wanted to use AI for the good of humanity and didn’t want it to be abused or used for ill. Of course, given the amount of computing power needed to get AI “ready” for the world, they both ultimately sold out to large companies, Google and Microsoft. They both tried to include restrictions (like an independent ethics board, for example) to prevent it from going sour, but here we are...

I thought this was very interesting. I found it particularly interesting to find Elon Musk so involved, particularly in the “ethics” side of things. Though there was a difference explained between AI ethics and AI safety. Elon Musk ended up promoting the “safety” side of things. I didn’t know about that part of the AI controversy, but apparently there are a bunch of people who legitimately think AI will annihilate humans in some way, shape, or form, Musk being one of them. So they formed organizations to help prevent that. On the more frustrating side was the part I did know about: the ethics – the racism, sexism, made up information/citations, etc. Frustrating in that there were (at least initially) people hired to help prevent this, but (without saying too much in my review), that just didn’t pan out. I have read a bit about AI, and at work (I’m a librarian), AI has become a big topic, so not everything was new to me.