Guides to AI

The rapid increase in the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) in business, government, education and even in people’s daily lives has led to a growing number of books on the topic.

The best way to keep pace with this technological change is to try to read as many books on the use of AI. From time to time therefore, I will use my column to write book reviews on this topic as I come across these books.  

For this column, I will review four books which were given to me by my friend and business associate Vic Valledor, Lockton Philippines president and CEO.  These books were recommended to him by certain faculty members in a summer executive program he was attending in Harvard University in Boston.

The first book is “Aligning Technology with Strategy” edited and published by Harvard Business Review Press, 2011. This is a collection of eight articles from the magazine Harvard Business Review. The titles are: Six IT Decisions your IT People Should not Make; Getting IT Right; IT Doesn’t Matter; Bold Retreat: A New Strategy for Old Technologies; Information Technology and the Board of Directors; Competing on Analytics; Investing in the IT that Makes a Competitive Difference; Empowered. 

In its foreword, the editors say: “Most companies waste billions of dollars on technology. Don’t be one of them.” This collection will help corporate executives clarify corporate strategy with its IT department; determine which IT projects will support a company’s strategy; transform IT investments into profits; build a technology platform for the entire organization; adopt new technologies only when their best practices are established; use analytics to make smart decisions at all levels of the company and integrate social media into a business.

“Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” by Nick Borstrom, published by the Oxford University Press, 2014. The author is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University and director of Humanity Institute. He examines what he calls the most essential problem of our time: “Can we solve the superintelligence control problem before it is too late?” He addresses an issue which is being debated worldwide: “If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, the fate of our species would depend on the actions of powerful AI.” The author says in his Preface that this is not an easy book to write but he also says that his book includes suggestions on what should be done now to increase humankind’s chances of avoiding an existential catastrophe later.

For example, he writes about some features of an AI architecture that would enable the kind of behavior to ensure that AI remains friendly. This is must reading for those who believe that human civilization may be at stake with the advent of AI.

Perhaps because Borstrom, aside from being an AI expert is also a philosophy professor, he also addresses a moral question on the “… reduction of existential risks and the attainment of a civilizational trajectory that leads to a compassionate and jubilant use of humanity’s cosmic endowment.”

The third book is “Can You Hear Me? How to Connect with People in the Virtual World” written by Nick Morgan, published by Harvard Business Review Press, 2018. The author is considered one of America’s top communications coaches and thinkers. He appears regularly on CNN as an expert communicator. In his book Morgan outlines five big problems with communication in the virtual world: lack of feedback, lack of empathy, lack of control, lack of emotion and lack of connection and commitment. These are the characteristics that sometimes get lost when we shift to a more virtual world. 

Morgan argues that while virtual communication will never be as rich as a face-to-face meeting, recent research suggests that what we need to learn is how to consciously deliver a set of cues, both verbal and nonverbal. He guides us through this important process by providing rules for virtual feedback, an empathy assessment and virtual temperature check, tips for creating trust in a virtual context and advice for specific digital channels such as email and text, the conference call, Skype and more.

“Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans” was written by Melanie Mitchell, a professor of computer science at Portland State University. It is published by Picador, 2019. The book reviews AI’s history and the recent spate of successes, hopes and emerging fears surrounding AI. Mitchell tries to answer several interesting and urgent questions surrounding AI. How intelligent are the best AI programs? How do they work? What do they actually do and when The rapid increase in the utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) in business, government, education and even in people’s daily lives has led to a growing number of books on the topic.

The best way to keep pace with this technological change is to try to read as many books on the use of AI. From time to time therefore, I will use my column to write book reviews on this topic as I come across these books.  

For this column, I will review four books which were given to me by my friend and business associate Vic Valledor, Lockton Philippines president and CEO.  These books were recommended to him by certain faculty members in a summer executive program he was attending in Harvard University in Boston.

The first book is “Aligning Technology with Strategy” edited and published by Harvard Business Review Press, 2011. This is a collection of eight articles from the magazine Harvard Business Review. The titles are: Six IT Decisions your IT People Should not Make; Getting IT Right; IT Doesn’t Matter; Bold Retreat: A New Strategy for Old Technologies; Information Technology and the Board of Directors; Competing on Analytics; Investing in the IT that Makes a Competitive Difference; Empowered. 

In its foreword, the editors say: “Most companies waste billions of dollars on technology. Don’t be one of them.” This collection will help corporate executives clarify corporate strategy with its IT department; determine which IT projects will support a company’s strategy; transform IT investments into profits; build a technology platform for the entire organization; adopt new technologies only when their best practices are established; use analytics to make smart decisions at all levels of the company and integrate social media into a business.

“Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” by Nick Borstrom, published by the Oxford University Press, 2014. The author is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University and director of Humanity Institute. He examines what he calls the most essential problem of our time: “Can we solve the superintelligence control problem before it is too late?” He addresses an issue which is being debated worldwide: “If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, the fate of our species would depend on the actions of powerful AI.” The author says in his Preface that this is not an easy book to write but he also says that his book includes suggestions on what should be done now to increase humankind’s chances of avoiding an existential catastrophe later.

For example, he writes about some features of an AI architecture that would enable the kind of behavior to ensure that AI remains friendly. This is must reading for those who believe that human civilization may be at stake with the advent of AI.

Perhaps because Borstrom, aside from being an AI expert is also a philosophy professor, he also addresses a moral question on the “… reduction of existential risks and the attainment of a civilizational trajectory that leads to a compassionate and jubilant use of humanity’s cosmic endowment.”

The third book is “Can You Hear Me? How to Connect with People in the Virtual World” written by Nick Morgan, published by Harvard Business Review Press, 2018. The author is considered one of America’s top communications coaches and thinkers. He appears regularly on CNN as an expert communicator. In his book Morgan outlines five big problems with communication in the virtual world: lack of feedback, lack of empathy, lack of control, lack of emotion and lack of connection and commitment. These are the characteristics that sometimes get lost when we shift to a more virtual world. 

Morgan argues that while virtual communication will never be as rich as a face-to-face meeting, recent research suggests that what we need to learn is how to consciously deliver a set of cues, both verbal and nonverbal. He guides us through this important process by providing rules for virtual feedback, an empathy assessment and virtual temperature check, tips for creating trust in a virtual context and advice for specific digital channels such as email and text, the conference call, Skype and more.

“Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans” was written by Melanie Mitchell, a professor of computer science at Portland State University. It is published by Picador, 2019. The book reviews AI’s history and the recent spate of successes, hopes and emerging fears surrounding AI. 

Mitchell tries to answer several interesting and urgent questions surrounding AI. How intelligent are the best AI programs? How do they work? What do they actually do and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect AI to become? How soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? This book has been described as “… an indispensable guide to understanding today’s AI, its quest for human level intelligence and its impact on the future of humankind.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting findings that Mitchell states is when she says: “Computers seem to be getting smarter at an alarming rate, but one thing they still cannot do is appreciate irony.” She ends her book with her answers to the question:  “What exciting problems in AI are still unsolved?”

I have chosen these books because their target audience is not the people who intend to make a career in AI. Hopefully, these books will serve as a guide for readers who seriously want to understand AI.

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