This eye-opening narrative journey into the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence reveals the dangerous ways AI is exploiting the unconscious habits of our minds, and the real threat it poses to humanity: "The best book I have ever read about AI" (New York Times bestselling author Roger McNamee).
This eye-opening narrative journey into the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence reveals the dangerous ways AI is exploiting the unconscious habits of our minds, and the real threat it poses to humanity: "The best book I have ever read about AI" (New York Times bestselling author Roger McNamee).
Artificial intelligence is about to amplify the most primitive version of who we are, and spit it back at us for entertainment and profit. That's the warning from award-winning technology journalist Jacob Ward, whose decade-long journey through the cutting edge of AI and behavioural science reveals that we're on the verge of becoming caught in The Loop: a shrinking cycle of narrowed choices and lost skills that will turn us away from expertise, human connection, and creativity if we don't act fast.
From biometric surveillance states that track the movements and relationships of over a billion people, to the algorithms that determine what movies get made, to the risky multiple-choice simplicity of automated battlefield systems, this book reveals that the most obvious patterns in our behaviour-patterns that AI is most likely to vacuum up-are not the ones we want to perpetuate. As the tech industry begins writing flawed human habits into AI, The Loop is a call to look at ourselves more clearly, so we can put only the best parts of ourselves into the systems we create."[The Loop] combines a remarkable synthesis of a mountain of behavioral science research about the human mind, and a travelogue through the world of artificial intelligence history and current practice."
--Alexis Madrigal, KQED (NPR) Forum"A salutary effect of growing disillusionment with tech has been a shelf of excellent critiques. But The Loop is a strong entry in the canon...AI represents perhaps the ultimate shiny object. But Ward penetrates to the dark vacancy at its core."
--San Francisco Chronicle"Scary stuff...this book has it all [and] the "how to fight back" part is very important."
--Hoda Kotb, The Today ShowJacob Ward is technology correspondent for NBC News, and previously worked as a science and technology correspondent for CNN, Al Jazeera, and PBS. The former editor-in-chief of Popular Science magazine, Ward writes for The New Yorker, Wired, and Men's Health. His ten-episode Audible podcast series, Complicated, discusses humanity's most difficult problems, and he's the host of a four-hour PBS documentary series, "Hacking Your Mind," that introduces a television audience to the fundamental scientific discoveries in human decision making and irrationality. In 2018, he was a Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He lives in Oakland, California.
This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.