Completed: June 8, 2024
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: I cannot remember a single source, but I read about an AI conference in several publications including one by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but I can no longer find it. In any case this book keeps showing up as a reference.
Words for which I sought help:
bradytelic -- of or relating to evolution at a rate slower than the standard for a given group of plants or animals
propaedeutic -- an introduction to a subject or area of study
Review:
This book is often identified as alarmist. I did not find it that way. Perhaps it is the sheen of time that suggests the issues discussed are quite realistic. Bostrom is agonizingly detailed (even to the point of mathematical formulas that seem, to me, to be sort of a technical overkill as the concepts behind the variables seem to be immeasurable--thus the formula is present but it is not terribly meaningful). His brief forays into philosophy do not serve him well (he makes a cheeky comment that since there is not majority opinion of how value systems should work, at least half the philosophers are wrong--which, while true, is meaningless because if there was a majority opinion that majority could also be wrong). Despite this, I found the book both interesting and thought provoking. It was so much so that my wife and family occasionally thought I was doing nothing when I set the book aside to try and think about the implications of a particular paragraph, page, or chapter. In reality, I was stuck in such deep thought that I was not terribly mobile. I'm not saying it was profound thought--just all encompassing for my brain.
No comments:
Post a Comment