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the New York Times

Coming in 2023

coming in 2024

the book about artificial intelligence that you need to read

Technology has always shaped human history, but artificial intelligence is different.

Unlike the wheel, combustion engines, or electricity, AI does the thing that humans do best: think. While AI hasn’t reproduced the marvelously complex human brain, it has been able to accomplish astonishing things. It has defeated our best human players at games like chess, Go, and Jeopardy! It’s learned to recognize objects and speech. AI tools like ChatGPT can create art and high-quality writing. It’s even let grieving people feel as though they were talking with their dead loved ones.

 But AI has also put innocent people in jail, manipulated the emotions of social media users, and tricked people into believing deepfake propaganda. It’s also failed thus far to live up to its promise—to create intelligent machines that perceive, learn, reason, and make decisions faster and better than human beings.

Failures aside, AI gets better every day, and over the next decade, it will transform our lives. In this nonfiction book, acclaimed author and teacher Martha Brockenbrough guides readers through its history, how it works, and where it often falls short.  

The book also explores AI’s effects on education, health care, work, politics, international relations, war, and even romance. It’s essential reading for everyone who wants to understand how artificial intelligence got here, how we can expect it to change the world—and how we might have some say in the matter.