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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.
An actor and comedian tells the story of her journey from being an unpaired “animal” to a “new mammal mother” in love.
After Slate completed her first book, “the issue of finding a partner…never rested and never allowed rest for [her] either.” Senses heightened, she had stepped into her most animal self and was on a quest to “fulfill [her] mammal instincts.” Loneliness and emotional vulnerability made her seek connection with neighborhood dogs and insights from books that promised to bring soulmates. When love did finally find her, the anxiety that he would reject her for being herself and “drinking tequila on a Saturday afternoon…then [having] a bath with my friend” was intense. After the pair became a couple and Slate became pregnant with the baby she called “the lifeform,” her neuroses—which the author mocks through an imaginary session with a psychologist—went into overdrive. Yet even as she wrestled with her fears, Slate also discovered that the body that was so often a “bay of doubt” was also becoming a “harbor of well-being” for the life-form to which she was attached. Then, during a time of “plague and disruption,” the author “exploded [her] vagina” to give birth, becoming not only a mother, but a “mammal with a soul that [was] born anew every day.” Though still haunted by a “purple-dark hole marking me in the afternoons,” Slate had become secure enough in the “nest” she had built for herself to see the hole more as a “bluish egg-thing” portending possibility. At times whimsical in its flights of fancy and always surprising in the moments of lyrical grace it offers, Slate’s book celebrates the transformative power of surrendering to love and life.
Delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780316263931
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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