AI Snake Oil

We aren't looking at a press release.

We've actually pulled together a curated stack of 12 foundational books on artificial intelligence.

And, you know, books are a remarkably slow instrument for a blistering fast subject.

They really are.

But that's exactly why they are so valuable here.

A state of exception.

What does that mean in this context?

It makes it extremely difficult for a software engineer in that company to stand up and say, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't be scraping copyrighted books without paying the authors."

It's a concept or an idea and encompasses a lot of other tools, products, techniques, practices under that big umbrella.

And so there's two writers who wrote a book called AI Snake Oil who have this analogy of AI being like the world vehicle.

I really love this analogy because they basically say, well, imagine if we lived in a world where anything that took us from A to B, we just called a vehicle and we never went any more specific than that.

So, you know, bicycles, space shuttle.

I've had a few AI experts on here.

Arvind Narayanan, a Princeton computer science professor and the co-author of AI Snake Oil.

Dr. Avril Epps, who talks about algorithmic manipulation.

Dr. Bailey Parnell, the social scientist and founder of the Center of Digital Wellbeing, who gave us a very refreshing look at some of the upsides of AI technology.

You know, I think that there's, those are really fun places to start.

And then AI Snake Oil is very good by Arvind Narayanan.

And I mean, they're all, so yeah, just go to the website.

I mean, there's just, they're all great kind of different angles to look at this material.

Also returning with us from the Bay Area is Sayash Kapoor.

He's an incoming professor at UC Berkeley and co-author of AI Snake Oil, What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference.

Sayash, it's great to have you back.

It's great to be here.

Now we're turning to someone who has a different view of the risk.

Sayash Kapoor is an incoming professor at UC Berkeley and the co-author of the book AI Snake Oil.

Welcome, Sayash.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Pleasure to do it.

Also, thank you to Sayash Kapoor, an incoming professor at UC Berkeley.

He's also co-author of the book, AI Snake Oil.

Thank you so much, Sayash, for sharing your thoughts today.