book cover for evil robots, killer computers, and other myths

Amazon Bestseller

Silver Medal Winner for Best Emerging Trends / AI Book in the 2022 Axiom Business Book Awards

Evil Robots, Killer Computers, and Other Myths

explains in simple terms and without any advanced mathematics, how AI technology works, why intelligent robots will never be built, and how other negative impacts of AI can be controlled.

You’ll learn how AI systems work including…

  • The IBM Watson computer that beat the Jeopardy! champions

  • The technology underlying the Cambridge Analytica scandal

  • The Netflix and Amazon recommendation engines

  • Facial recognition systems

  • Chatbots like Siri and Alexa

  • Google Translate

  • The Microsoft system that reads better than humans

  • Deepfakes and fake news

You will also learn why none of these systems will lead to intelligent robots.

From Forbes.com:
“Shwartz points out that many people are concerned that intelligent robots will be able to read manuals, take courses, and eliminate all our jobs. Fortunately, this is science fiction…  It would take a huge breakthrough to create intelligent robots, and today’s AI researchers have only vague ideas about how to create such a breakthrough.  Such a breakthrough is about as likely as time travel.”

From Kirkus Reviews:
“Despite his subject’s forbidding technicality, Shwartz writes with unwavering clarity in a book that will be accessible to a wide audience.  A thoughtfully cautious appraisal of AI and its promise.”

From Midwest Book Review:
“…should be required reading as a basic primer for any science and technology student interested in AI development and history.”

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EVIL ROBOTS, KILLER COMPUTERS, AND OTHER MYTHS

The Truth About AI and the Future of Humanity

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

This chapter discusses the positive impact of AI on our everyday lives.  It explains that every one of today’s AI systems are one-trick ponies that have no human-level intelligence.  Last, it sets up the rest of the book to explain how these systems work, why they will not evolve into human-level intelligence, and how AI will impact the future of humanity.

Though AI will not evolve into the evil robots or killer computers of science fiction lore, AI can still have a negative impact on society – if we let it.  This chapter discusses the legislative and political issues that are arising from the use of AI to create semi-autonomous capabilities that can be used in weapons of war, autonomous vehicles, and many other applications.

Over the last 60 years, there have been three periods of high optimism around AI including the current one.  In between, there have been two “AI winters”.  This chapter takes the reader through the history of the three AI hype cycles and two AI winters and explains what is different about the current incarnation of AI.

AI will not take all our jobs because we will not see human-level AI in our lifetimes.  However, AI will have an impact on employment.  This chapter reviews the impact of technology automation in general on employment and answers the question of whether the impact of AI automation will follow the historical patterns by summarizing the analyses of experts on the topic.

This chapter starts by explaining simple supervised learning systems and works up to credit card fraud detection and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  In each case, the result of supervised learning is a function that can do one and only one task and has no human-level intelligence.

One of the downsides of AI technology is that it provides a powerful tool kit for deception. Bad actors can use these tools to shake the very foundations of a free society through the manipulation of elections. Widespread misinformation, digital impersonation, and uncanny human-like robots are now (somewhat) possible. This chapter discusses legislative changes necessary to reign in these bad actors.

This chapter explains unsupervised learning, how deepfakes work, and how AI can be used to generate fake news.  This chapter also explains why unsupervised learning systems can do one and only one thing and have no human-level intelligence.

What Drives Self-Driving Cars.  Self-driving cars use many of the AI technologies explained in this book.  This chapter explains the history and technology behind autonomous vehicles.  It explains how self-driving cars work and explains why it will be difficult if not impossible to build safe self-driving cars.

This chapter explain how reinforcement learning works and how it was used to beat the best Go players in the world.  The chapter also explains how researchers are using reinforcement learning to build robots.  Here also, the resulting systems are functions that can do one and only one thing and have no human-level intelligence.

George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four describes a future society in which the government continuously monitored everyone’s actions and conversations. Today’s AI technology makes that level of monitoring possible, and society needs to cope with the consequences.

This chapter explains deep supervised learning and describes how machine translation, speech recognition, and facial recognition work.  In each case, the result is again a function that can do one and only one thing and has no human-level intelligence.

This chapter opens up the hood on the IBM Watson computer system that beat two Jeopardy! champions in 2012, explains how chatbots like Siri and Alexa work, and explains how Microsoft’s system that “reads better than humans” works.  All these systems are created with clever programming tricks and have no human-level intelligence.

This chapter examines AI research on building computers and robots that can think and reason.  The chapter explains why there has been no tangible progress in this endeavor.

This chapter discusses how AI contributes to discrimination against minorities and invasion of privacy and discusses possible approaches to regulation, many of which are already in process.  The chapter also explains why, even though the popular press blames AI for these issues, most of these issues would exist if AI had never been invented.

This chapter summarizes the current state of AI and concludes that, while AI has produced a great deal of technological wizardry, every AI system is a one-trick pony with no more real intelligence than a toaster.  Moreover, none of today’s AI technologies will ever lead to human-level intelligence.  While it’s not possible to state definitively that human-level intelligence will never be achieved, we have no more idea of how to build it today than we did in 1980.  That means it’s about as likely to be achieved as time travel.  Regarding the development of human-level intelligence, the chapter concludes that “…we’re at the starting gate. Again.”

The epilogue summarizes the author’s thoughts on how we should approach the negative social issues associated with AI.  First, we need to stop worrying about Terminator-like scenarios.  These aren’t happening and ascribing thinking and reasoning capabilities to computers and robots unnecessarily complicates the task of finding solutions to social issues.  Second, we need to stop thinking about AI as a unitary cause of social issues.  Each of the social issues discussed in this book is a separate issue and requires a distinct solution.

photo of author steven shwartzPhoto by Karissa Van Tassel Photography

STEVE SHWARTZ
About The Author

Steve Shwartz uses his unique perspective as an early AI researcher and statistician to both explain how AI works in simple terms, to explain why people shouldn’t worry about intelligent robots taking over the world, and to explain the steps we need to take as a society to minimize the negative impacts of AI and maximize the positive impacts.

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