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Mastering AI

A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future

Jeremy Kahn

Simon & Schuster, 2024

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What lies ahead when it comes to AI? Tech journalist Jeremy Kahn extols AI’s potential contributions to humanity but offers warnings as well. He highlights AI’s ability to transform science, the arts, industry, and medicine. At the same time, Kahn notes that AI might erode “human capabilities” and negatively affect job markets, trust, privacy, and democracy. He describes the urgent need for ethical decision-making in automated systems development and regulations that govern AI output. Kahn further underscores that AI must complement, not replace, human talent.

Summary

ChatGPT’s 2022 launch sparked an AI arms race.

In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in a then-largely unknown start-up: OpenAI. Together, the two companies developed a powerful supercomputer designed to train one of the most extensive AI programs ever created. The software, dubbed GPT-3, could process relationships among 175 billion data points, including vast amounts of text from web pages, books, and Wikipedia. It used this information to “predict the next most likely word” in any given sequence, allowing it to code, answer factual questions, and translate languages in a human-like manner. More notably, it gave these outputs in response to “natural language” prompts: instructions framed conversationally rather than in code. This development meant even non-technical users could use the AI.

Before the advent of GPT-3, AI achievements remained niche — for example, defeating human chess or Go champions. These case studies demonstrated AI’s ability to learn from experience. However, they didn’t translate into practical applications or a consumer-friendly experience. The commercial potential of GPT-3 convinced Microsoft to increase its investment in OpenAI, leading to...

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Journalist Jeremy Kahn focuses on technology and AI’s implications for society.

Mastering AI

A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future

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ChatGPT’s 2022 launch sparked an AI arms race.

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