Mike Lawrence

Rare miss for Scalzi

Revisado: 10-08-24

Big Scalzi fan, and I’m reluctant to bring a negative opinion to a free book, but this was disappointing. Scalzi is normally good at hiding pending crises/twists/resolutions, but I perfectly predicted the crisis by the “backyard” scene (well before it developed) and the resolution had nothing special.

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well-written and entertaining

Revisado: 04-12-24

acerbic and smarmy in the best ways, This was an excellent memoir describing a life covering technology and the problems with the people who hold so much power.

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Decent as book for AI novices

Revisado: 04-03-24

A brief and pleasant exploration of how AI is shaping the world around us, with tips and suggestions for educators, workers, and students. Best seen as a business book or read by those with little AI exposure.

It's fine to not focus as much on larger AI risk as books can't be about everything, but his reasons for this were not compelling. He said larger existential concerns are disempowering, yet also urged people to become more engaged on the less dramatic AI issues lest their future be decided for them. The same companies and issues are involved in each, so I don't know why he codes them differently.

I sympathize with the difficulties narrating an audiobook but the production would have been better with another narrator.

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great for Dennett fans

Revisado: 12-21-23

an enjoyable exploration of his life and events (but not his work in detail).
academics will probably like it even more

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Well-written & important

Revisado: 12-05-23

This is a great book. It's a thorough yet non-technical exploration of why citizens and policymakers should be concerned by the rapid development of AI capabilities in recent years.

I thought the writing style was very engaging and accessible, and the author clearly discussed the core arguments for why AI poses a different kind of risk than any past human endeavour.

The book discusses harms that have already occurred, and provides thorough reasoning for the concern that even greater harms likely await us should we fail to anticipate and mitigate them.

I really like that the author provided concrete suggestions for public action and policy to guide the development of AI away from the current path of naive rush to risk, towards our common goals of universal human flourishing.

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intended audience seems rather narrow

Revisado: 12-01-22

a good step in the direction of seeing AI could be very useful but often a missed opportunity to provide more nuance about tradeoffs

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Solid book

Revisado: 07-14-22

Great overview of machine learning as it relates to the difficulties implementing human preferences, but little on the threat of ai as an existential issue

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Sowell at his worst

Revisado: 01-26-22

Unlike his other books, this was insufficiently rigorous and far more ranty. Lots of cheery picking and bad arguments. sort of like a compilation of this other works but in a bad way. It was hard to finish.

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Another work of brilliant scholarship by Caro.

Revisado: 08-25-21

As others have said, it's annoying that they broke up the audio into 3 volumes. Yet further, this particular audio book has 4 duplicate chapters at the end. I think they're trying to rectify the unnecessary statements of turning a cassette over but haven't fully fixed it yet.
Still worthwhile as I don't have time to read it.

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trite delight

Revisado: 07-10-18

an excellent choice for light summer reading even though the plot and dialogue and characters are relatively simple

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