I am Not a Robot by Joanna Stern

I AM NOT A ROBOT by Joanna Stern (former technology writer for The Wall Street Journal) is subtitled “My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything” and looks at a variety of areas (e.g., health, travel, communications) while using real world examples to showcase some potential benefits and downsides of AI. For example, Stern spent time with a very experienced radiologist and AI looking at mammogram and ultrasound images. It was fascinating to hear the health professional praise AI. In contrast, when she went to the dentist, AI was used as a crutch to justify recommending unnecessary and expensive procedures. Bill Gates told her, “The foundation of AI advances for healthcare are both in the discovery side and in the delivery side,” referring to being able to speed up innovation and to offer more and better explanations to patients. In fact, Stern interviewed “nearly two hundred people – from everyday users to some of the most powerful voices in this industry,” including  Steve Mann (the “father” of wearable computing), Sal Khan (educational technology leader), and Mustafa Suleyman (Microsoft’s CEO) amongst others. She shares her thoughts in a variety formats, often essentially bullet pointing ideas as when she describes her experiences with a variety of wearables or her problems with relying on AI only to answer texts and emails (that was a very short experiment). Stern explores potential impacts on education through a visit to her alma mater, Union College in Schenectady, New York, finding that teachers and students share concerns about AI’s impact, especially on critical thinking skills. Stern’s writing style is distinctive, and Publishers Weekly acknowledges that, saying, “Stern’s balanced, clear-eyed assessments and crisp, funny prose (‘I was teetering on the edge of the AI-byss’) make this stand out among the growing crowd of books on AI.” Highly recommended.

Below is a 20 minute video interview dealing specifically with writing and researching I AM NOT A ROBOT, but if you are curious about Stern’s twelve years of tech reporting at The Wall Street Journal, check out a wider variety of videos.

The Heart and the Chip by Rus and Mone

THE HEART AND THE CHIP by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone is a generally optimistic non-fiction work that is subtitled “Our Bright Future with Robots.” Author credentials are impressive and contribute to making this a relevant, easy to read text: Rus is actively involved in the robotics field as director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Mone has co-authored several other texts with scientists like Susan Cain, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Rus and Mone have divided their new text into three parts: Dreams, Reality, and Responsibility. Focusing on robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, they are adept at providing useful definitions (“a robot is a machine capable of following and repeating these three steps: (1) Sense (2) Think (3) Act”) and distinctions: “machine learning and artificial intelligence are often confused, as the latter has become a business and marketing buzzword, but you can think of machine learning as pattern recognition systems that work in service of AI, to assist with higher-level decision-making and reasoning.”

It was also very exciting to read about their positive spin on current (e.g., using scans in medical diagnoses with significantly reduced error rates when humans and robots work together) and future applications (e.g., developing exoskeletons to improve the mobility for older people), including numerous suggestions (a wish list, really) for inventions capable of meeting needs like: smarter, more sensitive hands; softer, safer robots; more agile robots (and perhaps ones that are better at anticipating human actions, especially when driving); ways to build robots faster; incorporating better artificial muscles and more powerful batteries, plus better sensors and faster brains; and mechanisms for communicating more naturally with robots. Yet another section outlines eleven attributes for future robotics systems, addressing questions of regulation and ethics at a high level. Rus and Mone acknowledge that there is vast potential for malicious hackers and see the need for cybersecurity as a reason that could “spur tremendous job creation.” Roughly five percent of the text is notes for reference by readers and researchers.

The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

THE COMING WAVE by Mustafa Suleyman, subtitled “Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma,” is about the potential impact of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology. Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, illustrates the point beautifully in the prologue which notes, “we are faced with a choice – a choice between a future of unparalleled possibility and a future of unimaginable peril.” He argues for containment, admitting that it is extremely difficult, but necessary and suggests biomedical ethics and regulations as a possible model. He also encourages readers to look at “choke points” (e.g., chip production) as another means of control or restraint. Think about changes we have seen in the last few years: Suleyman says, “Today, AI systems can almost perfectly recognize faces and objects. We take speech-to-text transcription and instant language translation for granted. … AI has been climbing the ladder of cognitive abilities for decades, and it now looks set to reach human-level performance across a very wide range of tasks within the next three years.” That is a very specific prediction from an experienced and well-regarded expert. THE COMING WAVE is a disturbing read, but one which merits much discussion and has received praise from Daniel Kahneman (“essential reading”), Bill Gates (“an excellent guide”), and Eric Schmidt (“utterly unmissable”). More information is available through interviews on Axios and on Have a Nice Future from Wired magazine.

Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence

With all of the focus lately on sentient beings, including AI and chatbots (see, for example, Grammarly’s recent announcement), it might not seem so strange to be looking at “The New Science of Plant Intelligence.” That is exactly what two academics, Paco Calvo (professor of philosophy of science at the Universidad de Murcia in Spain) and Natalie Lawrence (writer and illustrator with a PhD in the history of science) do in their new book, PLANTA SAPIENS. They begin by urging caution, saying, “whether you are deeply skeptical of the possibility that plants might have intelligence or are an enthusiastic believer in the supernatural wisdom of other lifeforms, we all need to broaden our minds carefully. … What you read here will be a challenge to anyone’s preconceptions.” Next, they describe the science in support of plant intelligence; they ask their readers to think deeply about plants, contemplating, for example, whether plant behaviors are merely genetically programmed reactions or actual engagement with their environment. Calvo and Lawrence praise thinking creatively and embracing trial and error – arguing repeatedly for open minds and “a new approach of cross-fertilisation between different specialisms [disciplines].” Although a bit long-winded in places, the authors pose numerous intriguing ideas and conclude by saying that studying plants may help humans “to better comprehend the nature of our own minds.” Notes and sources, plus a helpful index, comprise roughly twenty percent of this innovative text. PLANTA SAPIENS received a starred review from Publishers Weekly which described this work as a “mind-blowing debut.”

A Simple Choice by David Pepper

A SIMPLE CHOICE by David Pepper (The Voter File and others) is another political thriller from the past Chairman of the Democratic Party of Ohio. Pepper introduces Amity Jones, a former Supreme Court Clerk, and Palmer Knight, a TV reporter with deep family ties to Washington insiders. Initially, they are exploring different questions. Amity has moved to Ohio to be near her cancer-stricken mother and ends up trailing a suspicious van which appears regularly at the house of a neighbor whose young son has had a miraculous cure. Palmer becomes so curious about the unusual death (suicide? foul play by foreign interests?) of a United States Senator that he ends of a victim of a deep fake video campaign. It does take a while to set up all of those questions, but the middle of the book starts to interweave some answers amidst action-packed adventures (Amity is kidnapped; her brother is attacked; and Palmer makes his way to the White House). The ending felt quick and a bit contrived, but fans of political intrigue will certainly enjoy the diversion which A SIMPLE CHOICE offers. 

The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee

THE SONG OF THE CELL by Siddhartha Mukherjee offers “An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human.” Mukherjee won the Pulitzer Prize for 2010’s The Emperor of all Maladies and also wrote The Gene (2016) to great acclaim. In his latest he discusses the components of cells and much of the history behind our understanding of cellular biology. Do you remember creating a model of the cell in middle school with important structures like mitochondria (the energy powerhouses), the endoplasmic reticulum and its ribosomes used in protein synthesis, plus the nucleus center? Mukherjeee addresses all of these plus looks at processes like cell reproduction. He also reviews the role of technology, whether hundreds of years ago when single lens microscopes were used or recent work on immunity and cancer cells and many “mysteries beyond mysteries” which still exist. A well-written and fascinating review in which Mukherjee stresses we “don’t know what we don’t know,” THE SONG OF THE CELL received a starred review from Kirkus (“A luminous journey into cellular biology.”). Some related links: The Future of Everything (Wall Street Journal) podcast interview with Mukherjee about the future of cellular medicine; plus book reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal; I love the latter’s description of this new text: “an audacious, often mesmerizing, frequently dizzying, occasionally exhausting and reliably engaging tour of cell biology and scientific inquiry.”