09/25/2025
My Review:
Mastering AI by Jeremy Khan
This is a review of Mastering AI by Jeremy Khan. This recent publication of 2024 is a must read for those of us interested in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Mr. Kahan goes through a good analysis of the potential goods and faults with AI and how it's being developed.
In the end, Mr. Kahn suggests " The decisions we make individually and collectively over the next few years, will determine AI's fate and our own." I suggest that this is not hyperbole or an exaggeration.
Mr. Kahn points out that, many of the choices are “…in the hands of tech companies creating this software and the businesses that deploy it for commercial applications." And this is a key thing to understand. When we are forced to live within a society that is ruled by technologies, we will become the servants of it. Mr. Khan points out " with ai we must be proactive, not reactive".
Mr. Kahn spends some of the time of the book cheer-leading the technology, but he also spends a good deal of the time critiquing it. Early on in he points out " the damage that AI poses to our intelligence, to our ability to write, to think, to empathize, and to make sound judgments are perhaps its most dire and insidious consequences. They are also among the least discussed.
Mr. Khan points out throughout the book the different ways in which IA challenges our ability to focus, our ability to concentrate, our ability to write, and in fact, to think.
Within the critique elements of the book, page 53, he points out two important biases. One, automation bias, which is the tendency to defer to automated systems even in the face of contradictory data. End quote.
To assume that computerized systems are taking the right action. Page 83, another bias is automation Surprise bias which is a human cognitive bias that can hinder creativity and decision-making.
Mr. Kahn is quite sincere in his belief that the way that AI affects us and the way that we use us is up to us. Early on, page eight. In the end, how we use IA is up to us. We have choices to make as a society. Decisions that are rarely discussed in the public realm. This fact - that decisions are being made without public input is key to understanding some of the challenges to being proactive. As Mr. Kahan asserts we must be with artificial intelligence.
Mr. Kahn believes that government and corporate policies will make all the difference to AI's impact. And while this is true, we can see that while corporate policies develop AI for their personal profits, the government in the United States has been particularly slow in creating policies, much less laws to govern the development and deployment of artificial intelligence.
One element, Mr. Kahn points out through the book that I find most interesting is that AI systems, which are algorithms written by engineers containing whatever bias those engineers bring to the task. These algorithms, the way IA works, will always lack certain human characteristics.
The most important, Mr.Kahan asserts, is human empathy.
We should strive to ensign empathy at the core of our values.
At the center of our lives and at the heart of our institutions, empathy is something no AI will ever have, period. And it is the key to holding on to human preeminence in a world of ever more capable machines.
This point I agree with, and we must think carefully about those characteristics that IA cannot have. Empathy, compassion, true judgment, and even in the most advanced basis, the ability to understand the meaning of both decision making and actions. "Empathy is our most precious and enduring gift. It is the bedrock of our morality, and it is a thing IA is unlikely to ever possess ".
To proactively Cut into and dissect the ways in which AI is being built to affect us and how it's being deployed and will affect us is a large job that very few people consider theirs and one that we must take up nonetheless.
Mr. Kahn highlights that previous technologies such as the internet itself and social media were not proactively directed in either their design or deployment. This led to an astronomical amount of power and wealth being given to the corporations and people that control these technologies.
We have the opportunity to learn about AI's development and deployment and if we are going to be able to have any control over it we must act quickly to avoid it controlling us.
Please take the time to look at Mastering AI. I strongly recommend anyone interested in the technology to read the book.
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