THE INTELLIGENCE EXPLOSION: When AI Beats Humans at Everything, what it says on the tin

THE INTELLIGENCE EXPLOSION: When AI Beats Humans at Everything
JAMES BARRAT
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: With the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence, both existential fears and uncritical enthusiasm for AI systems have surged. In this era of unprecedented technological growth, understanding the profound impacts of AI — both positive and negative — is more crucial than ever.

In The Intelligence Explosion, James Barrat, a leading technology expert, equips readers with the tools to navigate the complex and often chaotic landscape of modern AI. This compelling book dives deep into the challenges posed by generative AI, exposing how tech companies have built systems that are both error-prone and impossible to fully interpret.

Through insightful interviews with AI pioneers, Barrat highlights the unstable trajectory of AI development, showcasing its potential for modest benefits and catastrophic consequences. Bold, eye-opening, and essential, The Intelligence Explosion is a must-read for anyone grappling with the realities of the technological revolution.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: In non-fiction publishing, there is...or was...a fearsome thing called "omigawd I've just bought a magazine article blown up to book size. That is this book.

Trenchant, of-the-moment analyses do not survive well...anyone here old enough to remember Faith Popcorn? Shere Hite? Laurence Peter? Peter Drucker?...all very famously took modern trends, extrapolated on them, and came to conclusions that, when wrong, now make us chuckle, ans when right, are largely so ingrained they seem useless as "predictions" (see Laurence Peter's eponymous Principle). We have here one of the latest in that distinguishing lineage. (No, that's not a typo.)

The arguably bad actors in Barrat's analysis are, in my view, much much worse than he paints them. He thinks hubris and greed are enough to explain their actions; most of them are malevolent and malign, to my way of thinking. To be scrupulously fair, Barrat presents some possible positive uses of what's being called "generative AI" which, well, I think overstates the present state of LLM development. There is an argument to be made that the danger of this system's rapid adoption is that it is nowhere near finished in its refinements of its capabilities; in fact, the real threat may be the black-box problem that has legions of experts in their various fields extremely jittery.

As another voice in a very august chorus, members whose names are very niche knowledge but the venues platforming them are the likes of Scientific American, ScienceNews, and The Harvard Business Review, so hardly low-wattage luminaries, I wonder what Barrat thought he was going to add. As his precise coeval (we share a birth month and year, though I only wish I was as handsome as he is) I understand why he wanted to sound a klaxon instead of ringing a tocsin. The stakes Society is sleepwalking over a cliff holding are existential. There will already need to be a multigenerational project with focus and passion and funding needed to repair the damage already done in pursuit of these tech scum's vile agenda. I do not see that beginning in my own lifetime. I was wrong about how fast the rotten, soulless enterprise moved forward, so may I be wrong about how much damage it's already done...in the better-than-I-thought direction, please.

As a documentary filmmaker by trade, Barrat is used to using repetition as a major technique to get people to really hear him. Books, and he's written two (one about AI as threat in 2013) before, do not benefit the same way from that technique of reinforcement. It acts to annoy many of the readers who are most likely to agree with and amplify his trenchant, urgent message (me).

I'm afraid that the overall experience of reading this book was one akin to chatting with a fellow catastrophist whose affect on me was to have me agreeing but wanting to change the subject. YMMV and the topic is important enough to lead me to recommend you read the sample made available to see if you vibe with his prose.