AI Snake Oil

What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference

De: Sayash Kapoor, Arvind Narayanan

Narrado por: Landon Woodson

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.

©2024 Sayash Kapoor (P)2024 Princeton University Press

For the hot topic focused AI skeptics

It felt like a sampling of hot topics in the lens of AI. Lots of examples cited, but they felt cherry picked for social interest.

I’m entertained at the amount of AI anti-hype.

Emphasis on AI limitations.

Missed out on philosophy of Mind and how it plays into many of AI determinism notions being pushed by Ray Kurzweil et al.

My best nonfiction read of 2024

This book was one of my most anticipated nonfiction reads of 2024, and it did not disappoint.
This book builds on conversations they have had on their blog, AI snake oil, which discusses the hype around AI and cuts through the bullshit. I highly recommend that you subscribe to their newsletter and definitely get this book.
I also highly recommend the audiobook because it contains a conversation between Arvind Narayanan and Sayesh Kapoor.

I appreciated the sensitivity with which they handled the audiobook narration conversation, especially given that I listened to this on Amazon, which has been trying to replace human narrators with AI generated content.

Fantastic book!

I loved this book. It should be required reading in all AI / ML courses. Irrational exuberance about AI will pass, like it has passed about stem cells, nanotechnologies, etc. And like before, we need to keep cool about real possibilities of AI and snake oil of AI.

Use of AI

The book lists many interesting cases of AI deployment, but feels too activist. There is a palpable effort to convince readers of the harms of AI. The title of the book is already misleading, as AI likens it to an unhelpful substance of snake oil, which AI surely is not. At the end of the chapters, there is no brief summary of what each chapter says.

The unraveling of it all

I really enjoyed how they separated the different kinds of AI and what they are capable of, especially the real examples, of which some were horrific. I learned SO much about generative and predictive AI and the nuances. I hope they write more books on the subject and I will definitely sign up for their blog.

Meh, seemed like a political discourse much of the time.

Would not recommend this book. Seemed very politically biased and focused on race quite a bit.

Timely, in-depth and accessible

Authors provide a comprehensive overview of AI and why it’s so problematic in 2024.
It dispels myths and explains why there’s so much misinformation about AI. I recommend!

A realistic view on the over sensationalised technology

these two scholars have pulled back the curtain to see the facts behind all the sensational news surrounding artificial intelligence. AI is a great tool now and will continue to get better. But like so many other technologies of the past, it's probably not as powerful as it's made out to be. Of significance, the people who promote its abilities are the very people who stand to gain by both its popularity and the public's impression of its capabilities. One phrase that we should all remember is that we should be more concerned about what AI will do in the hands of the wrong people than what AI can possibly do on its own. All in all, this is a balanced and insightful read about a technology that is still very poorly understood by most people - even people who use it more and more every day.

Timely analysis

As the world is getting caught up in the AI hype, this book provides a balanced analysis of what AI can and cannot do.