Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer of Google [X]; host of the popular podcast, Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat; author of the international bestselling books Solve for Happy; Scary Smart; and That Little Voice in Your Head; founder of One Billion Happy; and Chief AI Officer of Flight Story. It can process information at lightning speed and remain focused on specific tasks without distraction. One star as I feel I have a slightly better understanding of AI now, but wouldn’t be a book I’d be recommending to anyone. Gawdat is trying to simplify immensely complex topics and get down to the crux of the problem for every type of reader. Elizabeth Day A proactive and bold read that provides the shake that humans need to take back our agency over AI, and therefore the fate of the world as we see it.

Scary Smart approaches the topic of AI from a basic, thoughtful viewpoint that addresses sci-fi/horror scenarios and utopian ideals as well. In fact, the reason I’m deducting 2 points from this otherwise pretty entertaining, engaging and thought provoking book is because the solution Gawdat proposes is (for me) deeply unsatisfying, and about equally as implausible. However, it feels like it was written entirely using text-to-speech (which the author multiple times does indeed mention he uses), making it feel like I am reading a waffly podcast script. Humans design the algorithms that define the way that AI works, and the processed information reflects an imperfect world. The book is full of examples of the impressive development of AI, but in every example the goal (what the machine needs to achieve) has been set by humans.Couldn't finish because the writing was bad, the arguments and the way he presented them were worse.

I'm paraphrasing what the author has to tell us, as he knows a great deal more about AI than I do - having worked for Google and watched an army of gripping robots learning from one another how to lift children's toys. The fact that he can be writing such a thing during Covid where the situation is painfully similar to what happened 100 years ago with the Spanish Flu only seems to exacerbate this point. Remember, Gawdat says, “If we control AI, it won’t live up to our expectations and if we don’t, we risk it going rogue. In the past we coded using giving specific instruction to computers to do a certain task, maximize profit or optimize a design according to some criteria. Scary Smart explores the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to upend (and perhaps even end) life as we know it.

If you’re keen on understanding more about the future of AI and our place in it, I'd definitely recommend giving this a read. Strap in for the ride, we’re diving headfirst into this conversation and uncovering the alarming truth about how vulnerable we actually are and what that means for the next decade ahead. We should teach others so we collectively become smarter at identifying AI that is good for humanity. Or the AI bot, the real ‘author’, wrote it confusingly to simply assess our reviews of it to see how blasé humans were to their impending destruction. ISBN 9781529077186), an extended essay on AI’s ongoing journey to the ‘singularity’ that will take place in the middle of this century, when machines will be "a billion times more intelligent" than ourselves.

Even a SLIGHT advantage in the AI game will confer MASSIVE financial and strategic benefits to the holder. In Scary Smart, Mo Gawdat, the internationally bestselling author of Solve for Happy, draws on his considerable expertise to answer this question and to show what we can all do now to teach ourselves and our machines how to live better. As I think about AI’s capabilities – the good, the bad and possibly terrifying, I realize how serious this moment is in history for humanity. History has already shown us that people will "troll" AI any chance they get, and our world is simply too complex for such a vision to happen.

When he talks about which technologies from Star Trek we have today I'm with him regarding talking to other people through small hand held devices (mobile phones), but he lost me when he claims we have mind reading technology today because we have WhatsApp (interestingly we the last year real mind reading technology seem to be developed with the use of AI and MRI machines) and teleportation because we have VR (just day dreaming should be enough if that is the case). Artificial intelligence and machine learning has always fascinated me, but now that it's really here it isn't such a childish fantasy. Instead, it’s an intelligently written and thoughtful examination of our digital future and the role we humans play in it. This provided a great balance of the good and the bad, allowing the reader to use evidence and questions posed to come to their own conclusions, whilst carefully interweaving facts with humour and speculation. Artificial intelligence is already smarter than humans in many ways, but, like so much of life, the output is designed by the input, with automated algorithms reflecting an imperfect world.