The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess by Kyle Kingsbury [Reading]

This book’s approach is interesting. Rather than try to make a bullet-proof case as to why AI is dangerous, it lays out possible negative results of increased AI adoption (such as the proliferation of misinformation that is increasingly hard to detect) across many areas of society. Taken together, all of these risks make it clear that an AI-infused future will not be as wonderful as tech companies want us to believe. I was a bit disappointed by the conclusion. The book explains one depressing effect of AI after another, most of which are the result of general AI adoption rather than individual use, and in the end Kingsbury essentially says, “you should stop using AI.” I’m sympathetic to that idea, and I already hardly use AI at all, but my personal resistance isn’t going to make much of a difference if society at large continues to jump in head-first. I suppose there’s not a whole lot more that an individual can do, though. I likely would have been disappointed by any conclusion…