Empire of AI
“Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI” by Karen Hao is an exhaustively researched look into one of the most important AI companies in Silicon Valley. Here's what I learned by reading it.
Read MoreWhy You Can't Pay Attention
You've felt it. That mental itch...to pick up the smart phone, check the news feed, check your social media performance, check something. Sometimes you think you should be able to resist it, but...nah, I want to look. I can quit any time I want! You know though, that you don't have nearly as much control as you’d like. It's not just you, it's everybody. The book “Stolen Focus” by Johann Hari is about that and why it's so hard to escape.
Read MoreWhy is there something rather than nothing?
Most people, either alone in quiet contemplation or engaged in alcohol-fueled conversations with friends at a bar, have at one time or another considered the question "why should there be something rather than nothing at all?" After all, it seems just as likely that the universe could consist of nothingness rather than be filled with planets, galaxies, cosmic dust and iPads. In “Why Does the World Exist” author Jim Holt sets out to tackle these grand musings...with very mixed results.
Read MoreThe Philosopher of Palo Alto
This is a strange little book that covers the life of Mark Weiser, a man who the author seems to believe occupies a pivotal role in the history of personal computing. Whether the author’s belief is warranted—or if indeed the entire book is warranted—is something I couldn’t quite decide by the time I reached the end of it.
Read MoreX-Risk: Thinking About the End of the Human Race
This is a review of the book X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction by Thomas Moynihan. I was expecting this book to be an exploration of how human beings seem to be continually drawn to creating the mechanisms of our own destruction. Whether it be be nuclear weaponry, machines which poison our atmosphere, or computers which will become hyper-intelligent in an instant, we always seem to head in the same direction. Why should this be so? I thought this book would help me figure it out. No such luck. “X-Risk” isn’t about any of these real world problems. It’s about the philosophical origins of these problems as written by famous Western thinkers over the last 400 years
Read MoreNotes on 'Liftoff' by Eric Berger
Elon Musk “long ago decided that for humanity to have a future, it must expand to other worlds”…a premise which is kind of nuts if one thinks about it for more than a few seconds but there seems to be no doubt that Musk believes it. This belief was his prime motivation for founding a company that could build the hardware to make that wild dream a reality. “Liftoff” is the story of the first few years of his effort to build the company we now know as SpaceX.
Read MoreWhat is Real?
In quantum physics, what does it mean for a particle to exist in multiple places at once until you "look" at it? Forgetting the math, what's physically happening? The book does a good job of guiding the reader through the history of those rebels who have questioned the Copenhagen Interpretation and put forth some possible explanations for what's physically happening in the Forbidden Question Zone.
Read More