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The Alignment Problem
- Machine Learning and Human Values
- Narrated by: Brian Christian
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
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Publisher's summary
A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them.
Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.
Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole - and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands.
The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called “artificial intelligence.” They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software.
In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the-ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Listeners encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they - and we - succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story.
The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture - and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.
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In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable. In this groundbreaking audiobook, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines.
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Good General Introduction to AI Topic
- By Catherine Puma on 03-26-20
By: Stuart Russell
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Progressive Capitalism
- How to Make Tech Work for All of Us
- By: Ro Khanna
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Unequal access to technology and the revenue it creates is one of the most pressing issues in the United States. An economic gulf exists between those who have struck gold in the tech industry and those left behind by the digital revolution; a geographic divide between those in the coastal tech industry and those in the heartland whose jobs have been automated; and existing inequalities in the technological access—students without computers, rural workers with spotty WiFi, and many workers without the luxury to work remotely.
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the content , the references to cases and all other relevant info
- By Anonymous User on 06-15-24
By: Ro Khanna
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Algorithms to Live By
- The Computer Science of Human Decisions
- By: Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths
- Narrated by: Brian Christian
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of human memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
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Great listen, just don't expect tips!
- By Adam Hosman on 08-07-17
By: Brian Christian, and others
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University of Berkshire Hathaway
- 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting
- By: Daniel Pecaut, Corey Wrenn - contributor
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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University of Berkshire Hathaway is a remarkable retelling of the lessons, wisdom, and investment strategies handed down personally from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders during 30 years of their closed-door annual meetings. From this front row seat, you'll see one of the greatest wealth-building records in history unfold, year by year. If you're looking for dusty old investment theory, there are hundreds of other books waiting to cure you of insomnia. However, if you're looking for an investing book that's as personal as it is revelatory, look no further.
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Great disappointment / false advertisement
- By Amazon Customer on 07-08-20
By: Daniel Pecaut, and others
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It's Elemental
- The Hidden Chemistry in Everything
- By: Kate Biberdorf
- Narrated by: Kate Biberdorf
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever wondered what makes dough rise? Or how your morning coffee gives you that energy boost? Or why your shampoo is making your hair look greasy? The answer is chemistry. From the moment we wake up until the time we go to sleep (and even while we sleep), chemistry is at work - and it doesn't take a PhD in science to understand it.
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Great Listen
- By Great and powerful IDE on 12-20-21
By: Kate Biberdorf
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Most Delicious Poison
- The Story of Nature's Toxins―from Spices to Vices
- By: Noah Whiteman
- Narrated by: Noah Whiteman
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Scratch beneath the surface of a coffee bean, a red pepper flake, a poppy seed, a mold spore, a foxglove leaf, a magic-mushroom cap, a marijuana bud, or an apple seed, and we find a bevy of strange chemicals. We use these to greet our days (caffeine), titillate our tongues (capsaicin), recover from surgery (opioids), cure infections (penicillin), mend our hearts (digoxin), bend our minds (psilocybin), calm our nerves (CBD), and even kill our enemies (cyanide). But why do plants and fungi produce such chemicals? And how did we come to use and abuse some of them?
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Off topic
- By Stewart on 12-26-23
By: Noah Whiteman
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The Watchdog
- How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two
- By: Steve Drummond
- Narrated by: Steve Drummond
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Months before Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that the United States was on the verge of entering another world war for which it was dangerously ill prepared. The urgent times demanded a transformation of the economy, with the government bankrolling the unfathomably expensive task of enlisting millions of citizens while also producing the equipment necessary to successfully fight—all of which opened up opportunities for graft, fraud and corruption.
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When Harry First Gave-Em Hell
- By Donald on 05-13-23
By: Steve Drummond
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Life 3.0
- Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Max Tegmark
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
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Irritating
- By Thomas Cotter on 10-25-17
By: Max Tegmark
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How Emotions Are Made
- The Secret Life of the Brain
- By: Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.
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Emotions are not things!!!!!!
- By Gary on 03-14-17
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The Molecule of More
- How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity - And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
- By: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, Michael E. Long
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and more.
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Did you know conservatives have more orgasms?
- By Josh on 10-21-20
By: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, and others
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The Algorithm
- How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now
- By: Hilke Schellmann
- Narrated by: Hilke Schellmann
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Hilke Schellmann is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, Wall Street Journal and Guardian contributor and Journalism Professor at NYU. In The Algorithm, she investigates the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work. AI is now being used to decide who has access to an education, who gets hired, who gets fired, and who receives a promotion. Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents and real-world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms making high-stakes decisions are biased, racist, and do more harm than good.
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SJW nonsense all the way through
- By Anonymous User on 05-16-24
By: Hilke Schellmann
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AI 2041
- Ten Visions for Our Future
- By: Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin, Justin Chien, Soneela Nankani, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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AI will be the defining development of the 21st century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand-new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order.
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Good concept, poor execution
- By Amazon Customer on 12-08-21
By: Kai-Fu Lee, and others
What listeners say about The Alignment Problem
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hila
- 12-11-20
A must read to every data scientist👩🏼💻
This book is most definitely the best creation by Brian Christian. I’m speechless, and listened to the whole book in 6 days. This is a brilliant niche in AI, up to date, and fascinating.
I cannot emphasize in words how much I enjoyed it (perhaps in a word2vec it’s the infinity vector?) And I can’t wait for Brian’s next audiobook.
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- Philip Van Stockum
- 11-15-20
Best overview of the topic I’ve read
This is an excellent overview of the field of machine learning - its history, the problems it faces as it is applied in the real world, and the potential routes for its (and our) future. I’ve read many layperson books on the topic in the past, and I learned a ton from The Alignment Problem. I now have a more complete understanding of the structure of the field and the technical framework it’s built on, as well as the what the technology can and so far cannot do for us. Equally of interest are the questions about human society that the book raises. Can we succeed at aligning AI’s goals with our own if we don’t really understand what our own goals are? Christian describes the current ideas for how this may be possible, as well as the ways in which AI has so far been highlighting moral questions that we didn’t even realize we were confused about.
The amount of research that went into this book is astounding - Christian draws from interviews with the top figures in every aspect of the field. It’s written clearly and succinctly, in a way that should be accessible to any reader, regardless of their prior knowledge of the topic. It’s also narrated by the author in a clear and incisive voice. An overall fantastic experience.
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- Boxy
- 02-15-23
Good history of the problem
The author provides a detailed history of the problem in relation to machine, learning, and human values. It was an interesting read, although dry in some spots was overall worth the read.
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- Vladimir Randy Jeune
- 07-27-24
This book was very enlightening
This book does a great job of telling the history and current limits of AI. It also does a good job of shining a light on or own shortcomings and how we should be careful not to imprint them in our AI. We should be careful but we can learn a lot from each other.
The narration was great and the story was very interesting.
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- Dan Collins
- 10-10-23
Hands Down: the Best AI Book
As a tech professional who has made it a point to listen to a number of these AI books on Audible, I recommend this book. It is truly a must-read.
The quality of the book is solid, the scope is complete and the explanations are approachable. What sets this book apart is that this book talks at length about how the folks that are on the cutting edge of AI are attempting to make machines care about what humans care about. This is the "Alignment Problem".
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-09-23
Phenomenal
This is extremely good. If you want to understand the real dangers of AI, read this book. Most of the recent work is either overblown or catastrophizing, but the author here takes a nuanced approach that looks at the actual research and problems arising from trying to implement human values in AI.
Every other sentence is thought provoking and spurred wholly new insights for me. I cannot recommend this one enough.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Morten Hansen
- 06-13-23
Excellent and broad introduction
A very good and broad introduction to the various topics and issues surrounding AI and machine learning.
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- Whit B
- 10-24-24
Enthralling
This was such an incredible portrayal of the advancements in machine learning by tying it to the ways humans learn.
The author, in a very relatable way, ties the development of better learning systems to our collective understanding of how humans grow and learn.
Incredibly fascinating all the way through!
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- Ran Away
- 07-18-22
Very enlightening
I learned a great deal about artificial intelligence reading this book including current big ideas, and clearly presented ethical and practical challenges in designing and implementing AI. The author’s narration was engaging and clear.
I strongly recommend this book and audiobook.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mike Lawrence
- 07-14-22
Solid book
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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1 person found this helpful