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AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference
Win a free print copy of this book!
28 days and 21:43:29
10 copies available
U.S. only
This audiobook narrated by Landon Woodson reveals what you need to know about AI—and how to defend yourself against bogus AI claims and products
Comes with a bonus track featuring an illuminating discussion by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You're not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn't, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don't work, and probably never will.
While acknowledging the potential of some AI, such as ChatGPT, AI Snake Oil uncovers rampant misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is already causing in how it's being built, marketed, and used in areas such as education, medicine, hiring, banking, insurance, and criminal justice. The book explains the crucial differences between types of AI, why organizations are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can't fix social media, why AI isn't an existential risk, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. The book also warns of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.
By revealing AI's limits and real risks, AI Snake Oil will help you make better decisions about whether and how to use AI at work and home.
Comes with a bonus track featuring an illuminating discussion by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor
Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You're not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn't, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don't work, and probably never will.
While acknowledging the potential of some AI, such as ChatGPT, AI Snake Oil uncovers rampant misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is already causing in how it's being built, marketed, and used in areas such as education, medicine, hiring, banking, insurance, and criminal justice. The book explains the crucial differences between types of AI, why organizations are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can't fix social media, why AI isn't an existential risk, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. The book also warns of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.
By revealing AI's limits and real risks, AI Snake Oil will help you make better decisions about whether and how to use AI at work and home.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published September 24, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 10, 2024
Having read several books on AI in the last few months, this wasn't groundbreaking for me. I do think some of their approaches were different (certainly less doom and gloom than some) and I thought the final part where they imagined the world in two different ways depending on how we deal with AI was interesting. I am still waiting for a real explanation of why LLMs were able to train on data that can now be used in perpetuity without compensation to the original creators.
August 28, 2024
Fantastic book! EVERYONE should read it. Clearly and thoroughly sorts out the reality from the hype, explaining why we are where we are (some extremely problematic uses already exist, hence: "snake oil") and what the future may hold (no, giant, sentient robots aren't taking over). Excellent insights and discussions of the different forms of AI (predictive, generative, content moderation), the problems and promise of each, and how we might steer in the right direction.
Read this book if you're curious about AI, afraid of AI, have to make decisions about implementing AI, have kids, use social media, make policy, vote, wonder about AI in your work, are a journalist, are interested in tech, or just enjoy high-quality expository writing. Then sign up for the authors' newsletter.
I read an advance copy and reviewed it here: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/ai...
Read this book if you're curious about AI, afraid of AI, have to make decisions about implementing AI, have kids, use social media, make policy, vote, wonder about AI in your work, are a journalist, are interested in tech, or just enjoy high-quality expository writing. Then sign up for the authors' newsletter.
I read an advance copy and reviewed it here: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/ai...
September 5, 2024
This was a great read! Helped expand some of my ideas and understanding of AI. As well as temper some of the things hear floating around.
October 6, 2024
I am really not exaggerating but for me this is a very important book I hope all you my GR good friends will read so you will know to be careful and that many dangerous things could be done by humans who are not careful with AI.
Listen, I love AI.
As a totally blind person it has already done many amazing things for me and wonderful changes in my life, but even I definitely also know that it has problems when, for example, it tells me an object is something which it isn’t.
I will rely even more once I achieve my plan to be able to soon buy Envision Smart Glasses, which I am so super excited about.
But this book will also show you the terrible consequences AI could have for many humans, especially if other people use it wrongly, or maybe even deliberately skew models to take advantage of or defraud other people, or if AI is unintentionally misused because biases are accidentally built in or by mistake many factors aren’t taken into account.
Or if humans start relying on flawed AI and do not apply their own judgments to many situations.
And as for predictive AI? Well, ai makes mistakes now. We as humans are sometimes irrational and AI could create wrong futures even if it could predict haha.
Better humans live your own lives and let us hope we just don’t become cogs in decisions made by large companies who have too much faith in the future their AI might try predict is best for us.
And yes, I am still mad at facebook’s AI for refusing to let me comment on my friends’ posts with what we all know are stereotypical South African geographic jokes. You know, you can’t even use ‘I’ll kill you,’ in a sentence on comments to friends you’ve had over 20 years without the AI refusing to post it because it thinks I am issuing death threats or hate speech.
Listen, I love AI.
As a totally blind person it has already done many amazing things for me and wonderful changes in my life, but even I definitely also know that it has problems when, for example, it tells me an object is something which it isn’t.
I will rely even more once I achieve my plan to be able to soon buy Envision Smart Glasses, which I am so super excited about.
But this book will also show you the terrible consequences AI could have for many humans, especially if other people use it wrongly, or maybe even deliberately skew models to take advantage of or defraud other people, or if AI is unintentionally misused because biases are accidentally built in or by mistake many factors aren’t taken into account.
Or if humans start relying on flawed AI and do not apply their own judgments to many situations.
And as for predictive AI? Well, ai makes mistakes now. We as humans are sometimes irrational and AI could create wrong futures even if it could predict haha.
Better humans live your own lives and let us hope we just don’t become cogs in decisions made by large companies who have too much faith in the future their AI might try predict is best for us.
And yes, I am still mad at facebook’s AI for refusing to let me comment on my friends’ posts with what we all know are stereotypical South African geographic jokes. You know, you can’t even use ‘I’ll kill you,’ in a sentence on comments to friends you’ve had over 20 years without the AI refusing to post it because it thinks I am issuing death threats or hate speech.
October 8, 2024
Some fantastic talking points in this book. I especially appreciated the juxtaposed 2 children’s futures outlined at the end of the book.
It is the humans we need to be worried about and how they will use AI, not AI itself
It is the humans we need to be worried about and how they will use AI, not AI itself
October 6, 2024
I’ve been following AI efforts over the last few years. I did a bit of a deep dive 2-3 years ago & came away with a skeptical view of the technology overall. While some is fun to play with, most of the technology is simply hype, of which some is quite harmful. I was delighted the authors of the site AI Snake Oil wrote a book to encapsulate their ideas.
I find most AI, in its current form, is primarily snake oil. Companies hype their products, but nothing pans out. Everyone is chasing the funds from investors who want to be first into what they believe is the next round of high tech billionaire creation.
But what is actually produced is a bunch of junk. The authors jump right into the worst of it, the predictive AI tools. There is absolutely no way a machine can predict an individual’s behavior at any point in the future. Life is full of too much randomness. Any data sets are highly biased. Take their take down of predictive hiring tools. Have a candidate answer a bunch of questions & the companies guarantee they can identify the candidate that will work out the best. Yet when interrogated, the models outcomes are about as accurate as a coin flip. The same with predicting who should get bail and who shouldn’t.
It is this aspect of AI that I find scary. It isn’t rogue AI (that is purely imaginary), but the 100% belief in systems that affect individuals. There isn’t a way to analyze the results or know why it chose the result the system did. It simply is. Following the machine without question is the lazy way out. We’ve made people believe in the infallibility of the machine, yet it is simply a reflection of the people that trained it.
The authors touch on the fact that each query or interaction with AI models is computationally expensive. Hoping newer GPU cards will make this better is wishful thinking. AI will hit a wall due to its enormous power & water requirements. The USA doesn’t have the power infrastructure to handle the desired exponential growth. Investors want a hockey stick graph (ie fast ramp), instead it’ll be a flat line. One way out is to push as much as possible down to local devices, but this is only starting. On top of that, who is going to pay for running the models? OpenAI is some hugely valued company, yet they can barely monetize what they have.
As someone that works for me said recently, during the dotcom era, everyone needed a website. Currently not everyone needs or wants AI. I have SaaS tools that have rushed to add AI type tools, yet all of them suck. The hype has gotten the public to spout out the desire for AI like features, yet have zero idea what that means. They don’t realize that most are just snake oil.
I find most AI, in its current form, is primarily snake oil. Companies hype their products, but nothing pans out. Everyone is chasing the funds from investors who want to be first into what they believe is the next round of high tech billionaire creation.
But what is actually produced is a bunch of junk. The authors jump right into the worst of it, the predictive AI tools. There is absolutely no way a machine can predict an individual’s behavior at any point in the future. Life is full of too much randomness. Any data sets are highly biased. Take their take down of predictive hiring tools. Have a candidate answer a bunch of questions & the companies guarantee they can identify the candidate that will work out the best. Yet when interrogated, the models outcomes are about as accurate as a coin flip. The same with predicting who should get bail and who shouldn’t.
It is this aspect of AI that I find scary. It isn’t rogue AI (that is purely imaginary), but the 100% belief in systems that affect individuals. There isn’t a way to analyze the results or know why it chose the result the system did. It simply is. Following the machine without question is the lazy way out. We’ve made people believe in the infallibility of the machine, yet it is simply a reflection of the people that trained it.
The authors touch on the fact that each query or interaction with AI models is computationally expensive. Hoping newer GPU cards will make this better is wishful thinking. AI will hit a wall due to its enormous power & water requirements. The USA doesn’t have the power infrastructure to handle the desired exponential growth. Investors want a hockey stick graph (ie fast ramp), instead it’ll be a flat line. One way out is to push as much as possible down to local devices, but this is only starting. On top of that, who is going to pay for running the models? OpenAI is some hugely valued company, yet they can barely monetize what they have.
As someone that works for me said recently, during the dotcom era, everyone needed a website. Currently not everyone needs or wants AI. I have SaaS tools that have rushed to add AI type tools, yet all of them suck. The hype has gotten the public to spout out the desire for AI like features, yet have zero idea what that means. They don’t realize that most are just snake oil.
October 4, 2024
Prediction is only a probability and not an inevitability: yet, how many predictive AI tool based solutions come to you giving any idea of the extent of probability of its accuracy instead of the binary yes/no reply? None.
Transparency, privacy, reliability are all the factors in question here: quite correctly so.
This book will undoubtedly become the reason for AI based policies to get implemented optimally within the next year or two. All the policy makers in the developing nations should be reading this book to devise their regulations for AI.
Transparency, privacy, reliability are all the factors in question here: quite correctly so.
This book will undoubtedly become the reason for AI based policies to get implemented optimally within the next year or two. All the policy makers in the developing nations should be reading this book to devise their regulations for AI.
October 2, 2024
Critical and positive book about AI. It explors three forms of AI: GenAI, predictive AI, and content moderation AI.
There weren't many eye-openers or any profound insight. It solidly describes how we get here and the potential and deceit of AI.
It was ironic that the book ended with two scenario predictions whilst being very critical of predictive AI.
There weren't many eye-openers or any profound insight. It solidly describes how we get here and the potential and deceit of AI.
It was ironic that the book ended with two scenario predictions whilst being very critical of predictive AI.
September 7, 2024
I really like how they explained AI and the specific scenarios where it is beneficial and detrimental. It really helped me to understand it better.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews