
AI Snake Oil
What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference
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Narrated by:
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Landon Woodson
About this listen
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.
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Story
We are living through a revolution in machine learning-powered AI that shows no signs of slowing down. This technology is based on relatively simple mathematical ideas, some of which go back centuries, including linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mathematics. It took the birth and advancement of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental math behind machine learning.
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A great listen, but a physical book is pre appropriate
- By Sameer D. on 11-07-24
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Self-Made
- Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians
- By: Tara Isabella Burton
- Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In a technologically-saturated era where nearly everything can be effortlessly and digitally reproduced, we're all hungry to carve out our own unique personalities, our own bespoke personae, to stand out and be seen. As the forces of social media and capitalism collide, and individualism becomes more important than ever across a wide array of industries, "branding ourselves" or actively defining our selves for others has become the norm. Yet, this phenomenon is not new. In Self-Made, Tara Isabella Burton shows us how we arrived at this moment of fervent personal-branding.
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Not to the same standard as T.I.B’s other books.
- By A. on 11-23-24
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Mastering AI
- A Survival Guide to Our Superpowered Future
- By: Jeremy Kahn
- Narrated by: Kyle Tait
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Within the next five years, Jeremy Kahn predicts, AI will disrupt almost every industry and enterprise, with vastly increased efficiency and productivity. It will restructure the workforce, making AI copilots a must for every knowledge worker. It will compel us to reimagine how we make art, compose music, and write and publish books. The potential of generative AI to extend our skills, talents, and creativity as humans is undeniably exciting and promising. But while this new technology has a bright future, it also casts a dark and fearful shadow.
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Worth the read
- By Richard Heimann on 09-16-24
By: Jeremy Kahn
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You Don't Belong Here
- How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War
- By: Elizabeth Becker
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine, and Kate challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war reportage for generations.
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Good book for Vietnam buffs
- By Penelopatty on 03-27-21
By: Elizabeth Becker
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The Cause of Death
- By: Cynric Temple-Camp
- Narrated by: Mark Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Spontaneous combustion and exhumation, drug mules and devil worshippers, a gruesome killing beneath the Palmerston North Airport control tower, a mysterious death in a historic homestead, a firsthand dissection of the infamous Mark Lundy case... In The Cause of Death, provincial pathologist Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp lifts the lid on the most unusual stories of death and murder he's encountered during his 30-year career.
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Love it!
- By NurseNano on 07-27-18
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Supremacy
- AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
- By: Parmy Olson
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In November 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive—until now.
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Author doesn’t understand AI
- By David on 09-30-24
By: Parmy Olson
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White Hot Light
- Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine
- By: Frank Huyler
- Narrated by: Gary Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor’s edge between life and death.
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Even Better than The Blood of Strangers
- By Elizabeth Darcy on 10-14-20
By: Frank Huyler
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The Nvidia Way
- Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant
- By: Tae Kim
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: the company’s chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.
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Don’t Buy This Book Be Forewarned
- By Susan Hess on 12-25-24
By: Tae Kim
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Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up
- By: Tom Phillips
- Narrated by: Nish Kumar
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern humans have come a long way in the 70,000 years they’ve walked the earth. Art, science, culture, trade - on the evolutionary food chain, we’re true winners. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and sometimes - just occasionally - we’ve managed to truly f--k things up.
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if you think white men are evil
- By Victor Fiore on 12-11-20
By: Tom Phillips
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The Myth of Artificial Intelligence
- Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do
- By: Erik J. Larson
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Futurists insist that AI will soon eclipse the capacities of the most gifted human mind. What hope do we have against superintelligent machines? But we aren't really on the path to developing intelligent machines. In fact, we don't even know where that path might be. Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to show how far we are from superintelligence and what it would take to get there.
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dead wrong after 2 years
- By K. Lyon on 07-11-23
By: Erik J. Larson
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Loaded
- The Life (and Afterlife) of the Velvet Underground
- By: Dylan Jones
- Narrated by: Dylan Jones, Robert G. Slade
- Length: 16 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on contributions from remaining members, contemporaneous musicians, critics, filmmakers, and the generation of artists who emerged in their wake, this definitive oral history celebrates not only the impact of The Velvet Underground but their legacy, which burns brighter than ever in the 21st century.
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Great, despite the inadequate structure
- By Alexis Chavez on 09-11-24
By: Dylan Jones
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Generative Artificial Intelligence
- What Everyone Needs to Know ®
- By: Jerry Kaplan
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) have created a new class of computer systems that exhibit astonishing proficiency on a wide variety of tasks with superhuman performance, producing novel text, images, music, and software by analyzing enormous collections of digitized information. Soon, these systems will provide expert medical care; offer legal advice; draft documents; write computer programs; tutor our children; and generate music and art. These advances will accelerate progress in science, art, and human knowledge, but they will also bring new dangers.
By: Jerry Kaplan
What listeners say about AI Snake Oil
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- P
- 01-14-25
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.
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- Richard Böhnel
- 01-31-25
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.
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- Jean Burke-Spraker
- 12-20-24
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.
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- Kat'm
- 10-12-24
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.
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- Igor R. Efimov
- 10-03-24
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.
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- All for a Fool
- 10-08-24
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.
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- USMCman
- 12-22-24
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.
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- P. Wang
- 10-13-24
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!
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- Gregory Adaka MD
- 12-17-24
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.
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- sameer totey
- 10-08-24
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.
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