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Future Tense: How We Made Artificial Intelligence—and How It Will Change Everything: 07/14/24

Future Tense: How We Made Artificial Intelligence—and How It Will Change Everything

Future Tense: How We Made Artificial Intelligence— and How It Will Change Everything by Martha Brockenbrough (2024) is a YA nonfiction about the history of computers and the development of AI. As it's a short book, it's more of a broad survey than an in depth discussion of any particular piece of this subject.

The book begins with early descriptions of how automation could better life. Rather than using those early theories of what might be possible as a jumping off point for the ethical discussion of automation, autonomy, data collection, etc, the author instead choses to rehash the the innovations that lead to the modern day computer.

The book is too short to be spending that much time on an extremely basic primer of computer and programming history. Yes: AI is built on this foundation. But none of this history lesson helps explore the how AI "will change everything."

Much of the AI discussion is centered on gaming programs: chess, checkers, and go. Again, yes, these are foundational but these games aren't where people are concerned over the ethics of the programs, the resources they use, the collection and training of data sets.

There's a very brief mention of Chat GPT and even less of a discussion of text to image generation. These two are what artists are concerned about. They're also the place where corporations are playing fast and lose with data collection, job losses, transparency with their customers, quality of presented "information" and so forth. There's no discussion at all about how language models like Chat GPT hallucinate and are so far incapable of giving reliable, correct information, despite corporations putting them in positions to do just that.

Three stars

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