Mastering AI - by Jeremy Kahn

About the Book

"A Fortune magazine journalist draws on his expertise and extensive contacts among the companies and scientists at the forefront of artificial intelligence to offer dramatic predictions of AI's impact over the next decade, from reshaping our economy and the way we work, learn, and create to unknitting our social fabric, jeopardizing our democracy, and fundamentally altering the way we think. Within the next five years, Jeremy Kahn predicts, AI will disrupt almost every industry and enterprise, with vastly increased efficiency and productivity. It will restructure the workforce, making AI copilots a must for every knowledge worker. It will revamp education, meaning children around the world can have personal, portable tutors. It will revolutionize health care, making individualized, targeted pharmaceuticals more affordable. It will compel us to reimagine how we make art, compose music, and write and publish books. The potential of generative AI to extend our skills, talents, and creativity as humans is undeniably exciting and promising. But while this new technology has a bright future, it also casts a dark and fearful shadow. AI will provoke pervasive, disruptive, potentially devastating knock-on effects. Leveraging his unrivaled access to the leaders, scientists, futurists, and others who are making AI a reality, Kahn will argue that if not carefully designed and vigilantly regulated AI will deepen income inequality, depressing wages while imposing winner-take-all markets across much of the economy. AI risks undermining democracy, as truth is overtaken by misinformation, racial bias, and harmful stereotypes. Continuing a process begun by the internet, AI will rewire our brains, likely inhibiting our ability to think critically, to remember, and even to get along with one another--unless we all take decisive action to prevent this from happening."--

Book Synopsis

A Fortune magazine journalist draws on his expertise and extensive contacts among the companies and scientists at the forefront of artificial intelligence to offer dramatic predictions of AI's impact over the next decade, from reshaping our economy and the way we work, learn, and create to unknitting our social fabric, jeopardizing our democracy, and fundamentally altering the way we think.

Within the next five years, Jeremy Kahn predicts, AI will disrupt almost every industry and enterprise, with vastly increased efficiency and productivity. It will restructure the workforce, making AI copilots a must for every knowledge worker. It will revamp education, meaning children around the world can have personal, portable tutors. It will revolutionize health care, making individualized, targeted pharmaceuticals more affordable. It will compel us to reimagine how we make art, compose music, and write and publish books. The potential of generative AI to extend our skills, talents, and creativity as humans is undeniably exciting and promising.

But while this new technology has a bright future, it also casts a dark and fearful shadow. AI will provoke pervasive, disruptive, potentially devastating knock-on effects. Leveraging his unrivaled access to the leaders, scientists, futurists, and others who are making AI a reality, Kahn will argue that if not carefully designed and vigilantly regulated AI will deepen income inequality, depressing wages while imposing winner-take-all markets across much of the economy. AI risks undermining democracy, as truth is overtaken by misinformation, racial bias, and harmful stereotypes. Continuing a process begun by the internet, AI will rewire our brains, likely inhibiting our ability to think critically, to remember, and even to get along with one another--unless we all take decisive action to prevent this from happening.

Much as Michael Lewis's classic The New New Thing offered a prescient, insightful, and eminently readable account of life inside the dot-com bubble, Mastering AI delivers much-needed guidance for anyone eager to understand the AI boom--and what comes next.

Review Quotes

"Fortune journalist Kahn expounds in his shrewd first book on how AI is likely to change art, education, and the workplace.....Striking a balance between bullishness and caution, Kahn sets out a helpful roadmap for harnessing the promise of AI while navigating its perils. The result is one of the more convincing assessments of how AI will transform society." --Publisher's Weekly

"Kahn, who reports on emerging technologies for Fortune magazine, brings a great deal of expertise to this discussion of artificial intelligence." --Kirkus Reviews

"In this smart, thoughtful, illuminating book, Jeremy Kahn reveals the myriad ways AI will influence the way we live, for better or worse, and, importantly, offers prescriptions for subduing its darker side. Mastering Al is masterful."--JOE NOCERA, coauthor of All the Devils Are Here and The Big Fail

"Written with authority and clarity, Mastering Al is easily the best exploration to date on the perils and promise of AI.--ASHLEE VANCE, author of When the Heavens Went on Sale and Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

"A timely and urgent exploration of Al's dizzying acceleration, and of all the ways this new technology can either improve our society or totally upend it."--BRAD STONE, New York Times bestselling author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound

"A wonderful history of the development of artificial intelligence, a thorough examination of its benefits to humanity as well as its grave dangers, and a manifesto of sorts for how we should proceed, Mastering Al is a must-read. It's hard to put down."--BETHANY McLEAN, coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room, All the Devils Are Here, and The Big Fail

About the Author

Jeremy Kahn is an award-winning journalist for Fortune magazine, where he covers artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. In addition to cover stories and features, he writes Fortune's weekly Eye on AI newsletter and cochairs its Brainstorm AI technology conferences. Previously, he wrote about technology, including AI, for Bloomberg. His writing on a range of subjects has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Smithsonian magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, and Slate. He has reported from India and much of South Asia, the Ivory Coast, Iraq, Venezuela, and most countries in Western Europe. He is a former managing editor of The New Republic. An Ohio native, he now lives with his family in Oxford, England.