Mastering AI

May 27, 2024
Fortune journalist Kahn expounds in his shrewd first book on how AI is likely to change art, education, and the workplace. AI can serve as an educational resource for disadvantaged students who might not otherwise have access to help outside the classroom, Kahn contends, describing how the online education platform Khan Academy built an AI tutor designed to emulate the Socratic method. Kahn is levelheaded in his assessment of AI’s abilities and shortcomings, suggesting that while the software might assist artists with generating ideas (“The British crime novelist Ajay Chowdhury uses ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner”), it’s designed to conform to examples it has previously encountered and thus can’t produce anything novel without extensive human input. Addressing AI’s limitations in the design and implementation process is critical, Kahn argues. For instance, he details how algorithms built for identifying crime hot spots reflected racial biases in the data the programs were trained on and asserts that such software “must be engineered to explicitly compensate for past racism by specifying equality as a goal alongside predictive accuracy.” Striking a balance between bullishness and caution, Kahn sets out a helpful roadmap for harnessing the promise of AI while navigating its perils. The result is one of the more convincing assessments of how AI will transform society. Agent: Todd Shuster, Aevitas Creative Management.