Confronting the avalanche of books on the prospects of AI, readers would do well to begin with this one.
The author of Homo Deus considers the future of information networks.
His international bestseller laying out ideas on human destiny is a hard act to follow, but Harari manages. The first part examines past information networks, leading with the intriguing declaration that “most information is not an attempt to represent reality.…What information does is to create new realities by tying together disparate things.” What that means is that “errors, lies, fantasies, and fictions are information, too.” Information is often wrong, and more information does not necessarily improve matters, so it’s essential that institutions contain self-correcting mechanisms. Our Constitution receives high marks for allowing amendments; holy books considered infallible, like the Bible and Quran, create problems and “hold important lessons for the attempt to create infallible AIs.” The second part deals with governments whose information networks maintain a balance between truth and order, arguing that just as sacrificing truth for the sake of order comes with a cost, so does sacrificing order for truth. Modern technology enabled large-scale democracy as well as large-scale authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Harari deplores the conception that democracies operate through majority rule. In fact, he argues, democracies guarantee everyone liberties that even the majority cannot take away. This is a sophisticated concept that current events suggest is not universally accepted, and recent advances in artificial intelligence may be an additional destabilizing force. Harari warns that modern societies controlled by carbon-based life forms (us) must deal with inorganic, silicon-based networks (AI) that, unlike the printing press, the radio, and other inventions, can make decisions and create ideas by themselves. AI’s ability to gather massive amounts of information and engage in total surveillance “will not necessarily be either bad or good. All we know for sure is that it will be alien and it will be fallible.”
Confronting the avalanche of books on the prospects of AI, readers would do well to begin with this one.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780593734223
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.
The Top Chef host describes her journey to new heights.
For those who don’t know, Kish is a “gay Korean adopted woman, born in Seoul, raised in Michigan” and “a chef, a character, a host, and a cultural communicator—as well as a human being with a beating heart.” Though this book covers every step of her journey, every restaurant job and television role, and also discusses her experience as an adoptee (very positive) and a queer woman (late bloomer), the storytelling is so straightforward, lacking in suspense, character development, or dialogue, that it is basically a long version of its (longish) “About the Author.” Seemingly dramatic situations are not dramatized—when she was eliminated on her first Top Chef run, she assures us that she did the best she could, and drops it. “I can spare you the gory details (bouillabaisse and big personalities were involved).” Later, she cites a belief in protecting the privacy of others to omit the story of her first relationship with a woman. With no character development, neither does the reader get to know those who fall outside the privacy zone, like her best friend, Steph, and her wife, Bianca. When she gets mad, she says things like, “It’s a gross understatement to say I was crushed, beyond frustrated, and furious with the situation.” The fact that “I’ve never been a big reader” does not come as a surprise. It is more surprising when she confesses that “I believe the universe is selective about the moments in which it introduces life-changing prospects.”
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780316580915
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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