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Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called 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.
In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.
Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.
In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.
Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published September 10, 2024
About the author
Parmy Olson
5 books78 followersParmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology regulation, artificial intelligence, and social media. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is the author of We Are Anonymous and a recipient of the Palo Alto Networks Cyber Security Cannon Award. Olson has been writing about artificial intelligence systems and the money behind them for seven years. Her reporting on Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp and the subsequent fallout resulted in two Forbes cover stories and two honourable mentions in the SABEW business journalism awards. At the Wall Street Journal she investigated companies that exaggerated their AI capabilities and was the first to report on a secret effort at Google’s top AI lab to spin out from the company in order to control the artificial super intelligence it created.
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August 12, 2024
Equal parts fascinating and worrying.🫢
Watch my BookTube video for more books on AI, advanced tech & sex bots. 🤖
Who is behind the AI that's drastically altering our lives? And are they questionable or honorable stewards of it? In Supremacy, Parmy Olson offers answers to these questions, and her findings are concerning.
Olson introduces us to two of the leading minds behind AI: Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis. She charts their efforts to develop AI and showcases their interests in creating something that would benefit humankind. But developing this kind of tech (especially if you want to do it fast) costs money, so Altman and Hassabis made deals with investors and large corporations.
Olson charts every deal made, every dollar exchanged, and every failed effort to implement an ethics committee to oversee the safe development of AI. She reveals who the big investors are, how they’re training and using AI, and offers an in-depth explanation of who is most likely to be harmed by these practices.
Even if you’re not a tech savvy person, you’ll find this book to be an approachable introduction to a complex issue. What Supremacy makes clear is that you deserve to know how AI is being trained, as well as how it’s being used to exploit you for profit.
Will AI free humans from mental drudgery, or will it bring about the end of civilization? The answer depends on who wields it and how they train it. If you'd like to learn who currently holds the reigns to AI and what kind of future they envision for us all, then I highly recommend reading Supremacy.
My deepest gratitude to the kind people at St. Martin's Press for sending me an ARC of this book.
--
ORIGINAL POST 👇
This book sounds like a must read. 👀
Tech journalist Parmy Olson deep dives into the world's two leading AI firms steering Google's AI efforts to reveal the "astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history."
Said to be a book that alerts readers to the real threat of AI that's currently being ignored: the profit-driven spread of flawed as well as biased technology into industries, education, media and more.
Looking forward to reading this!
Watch my BookTube video for more books on AI, advanced tech & sex bots. 🤖
Who is behind the AI that's drastically altering our lives? And are they questionable or honorable stewards of it? In Supremacy, Parmy Olson offers answers to these questions, and her findings are concerning.
Olson introduces us to two of the leading minds behind AI: Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis. She charts their efforts to develop AI and showcases their interests in creating something that would benefit humankind. But developing this kind of tech (especially if you want to do it fast) costs money, so Altman and Hassabis made deals with investors and large corporations.
Olson charts every deal made, every dollar exchanged, and every failed effort to implement an ethics committee to oversee the safe development of AI. She reveals who the big investors are, how they’re training and using AI, and offers an in-depth explanation of who is most likely to be harmed by these practices.
Even if you’re not a tech savvy person, you’ll find this book to be an approachable introduction to a complex issue. What Supremacy makes clear is that you deserve to know how AI is being trained, as well as how it’s being used to exploit you for profit.
Will AI free humans from mental drudgery, or will it bring about the end of civilization? The answer depends on who wields it and how they train it. If you'd like to learn who currently holds the reigns to AI and what kind of future they envision for us all, then I highly recommend reading Supremacy.
My deepest gratitude to the kind people at St. Martin's Press for sending me an ARC of this book.
--
ORIGINAL POST 👇
This book sounds like a must read. 👀
Tech journalist Parmy Olson deep dives into the world's two leading AI firms steering Google's AI efforts to reveal the "astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history."
Said to be a book that alerts readers to the real threat of AI that's currently being ignored: the profit-driven spread of flawed as well as biased technology into industries, education, media and more.
Looking forward to reading this!
October 1, 2024
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for access to this title. All opinions expressed are my own
Occasionally, I wish to reassure people that I don't just read dark retellings and dinosaur erotica. AI and ChatGPT are among the most talked about subjects these days, I felt that I would like to read more about them. Although informative, I still felt like I was hearing what I already knew.
Let me explain.
First, Parmy Olson sets the stage for how AI made its appearance. Understandably, humankind has always wanted to push the limits of what we have discovered and see how far it can take us. Then there are the creators who wish to help cure the societal issues that plague us to make a more balanced planet. Less fighting and more peace.
It may sound like a utopian dream but I am willing to "buy" into the tale and see where the narrative is heading.
Secondly, we are introduced to the big names of Silicon Valley(Facebook, Microsoft, Google etc) and how they begin playing the game. It is a tale of a lot of people who have a mission to make money, lots of money. Unfortunately, it shows that in the end, big dreams clash with the almighty dollar.
Lastly, there is a very brief look at the ramifications of AI and ChatGPT or at least how it will impact the USA. I found this disappointing as I would have loved to hear more about the positive and negative implications on a global scale.
My takeaway from the book was that we will wait and see what happens. I suppose, in a sense, that is all we can ask for but I was hoping for just a little bit more.
Overall, it was a well-researched book and sparked a desire to read more on this topic.
Publication Date 10/09/24
Goodreads Review 29/09/24
Occasionally, I wish to reassure people that I don't just read dark retellings and dinosaur erotica. AI and ChatGPT are among the most talked about subjects these days, I felt that I would like to read more about them. Although informative, I still felt like I was hearing what I already knew.
Let me explain.
First, Parmy Olson sets the stage for how AI made its appearance. Understandably, humankind has always wanted to push the limits of what we have discovered and see how far it can take us. Then there are the creators who wish to help cure the societal issues that plague us to make a more balanced planet. Less fighting and more peace.
It may sound like a utopian dream but I am willing to "buy" into the tale and see where the narrative is heading.
Secondly, we are introduced to the big names of Silicon Valley(Facebook, Microsoft, Google etc) and how they begin playing the game. It is a tale of a lot of people who have a mission to make money, lots of money. Unfortunately, it shows that in the end, big dreams clash with the almighty dollar.
Lastly, there is a very brief look at the ramifications of AI and ChatGPT or at least how it will impact the USA. I found this disappointing as I would have loved to hear more about the positive and negative implications on a global scale.
My takeaway from the book was that we will wait and see what happens. I suppose, in a sense, that is all we can ask for but I was hoping for just a little bit more.
Overall, it was a well-researched book and sparked a desire to read more on this topic.
Publication Date 10/09/24
Goodreads Review 29/09/24
November 10, 2024
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World, by Parmy Olson, is an interesting look at the race between two AI companies (OpenAI and DeepMind) to make AI products mainstream. The book follows Sam Altman, and Demis Hassabis, two brilliant AI researchers, as they built their business empires, and the now ubiquitous and somewhat maligned general AI that we are starting to use in our everyday lives. Sam Altman (eventual founder of OpenAI) was a gifted child, a bit of a rebel, and one who fit in well with the start-up guru/grifter culture that has become the norm in Silicon Valley. He attended the Y Combinator club at a young age; a club that has seen many start-up founders (Reddit, DropBox), and presided over a couple of semi-failed start-ups. He became interested in AI through various transhumanist blogs, and sought to develop what we think of as AI. Demis Hassabis was another brilliant kid from the UK - he was a chess wizard, and loved games, and tried to design a few himself, although he struggled to hit the mainstream. His worlds were two complex to be workable, so he sought to develop AI-like systems to help create bigger and more realistic worlds, eventually mixing his evangelical Christianity with AI-hubris to try and create life in AI. These two would found businesses that would eventually drive the release of AI programs in Microsoft and Google, respectively. Both were worried about creating dangerous programs, and sought to limit their products through creative mixtures of business and not-for-profits, venture capitalism, and competing wealthy backers. Both eventually sold out to the giants of the tech industry. This was a fascinating book, not so much looking at the technical infrastructure that forms "AI", but at the mix of pseudo-science and hubris that underpins the tech worlds richest minds. Characters like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel play a part in funding these schemes, and their influence and some of the strange ideas they think of as truths shine through in business decisions made by each company. This book did one thing really well for me, it really showed me the growing dominance of venture capitalists and their wild ideas (freezing brains, transhumanism, etc.), and how they will impact the world of the future.
AI to me is a very interesting tool. What we now think of as AI (ChatGPT/Microsoft CoPilot) are glorified search engines that offer some more functionality, and they are quite useful. I have experimented with CoPilot at work and for use of study, and it is a far better product than Google's tired and ad-ridden search engine. I do believe AI chatbots will offer a lot of efficiency when researching, organizing data, and have great impact on software engineering and coding, for example. They are also not really AI. I don't believe that ChatGPT is a living being, but a large (exceedingly large) dataset that organizes how questions are asked differently than the "waterfall" style query system Google has previously used. It is a great tool for productivity; it is not a living being. The folks that built these systems are brilliant, but also used their brilliance to make a ton of money through suspect marketing, and built so called AI systems that are fed the bile found in the depths of Reddit forums, and unpublished vampire fan-fiction (no joke, these are some of the data sets used to train AI). No wonder these systems hallucinate answers, take things out of context, and are often wildly mis-representative of reality. The bias and hubris of the tech industry - misogynist, largely white and male, and steeped in the echo chambers of their own making, is well represented in AI programs. These tools, however, will have a great impact on many industries. The limited, money-making grifting that Google sees in there use (increased ad revenue through better targeted ads) is self-defeating. Google's little AI tooltip at the top of each search decreases click-through to actual websites. CoPilot is more sophisticated, offering an answer, as well as a source list with links. It will be interesting to see how, once these concepts and programs leave the insular culture in the tech mega-giants, what they may actually be used for. Making a fake looking fantasy image of our favourite books is largely useless, and in my opinion, AI generated images are boring as they are not made by human hand. I don't think the generative AI will be a game changer for the time being. But its applications in things like the medical field, large data sampling, administrative efficiency, and even creative ventures like video game design, may be a game changer for these industries.
This was an interesting one! Enlightening both as a sample story for the oppressive overreach of American tech companies, and as a biography of two dreamer whiz-kids who fell to grifter culture, this is one to read to get a finger on the pulse of some upcoming, possibly ground breaking, technologies, as well as a good exploration of the ethics and bias' associated within Silicon Valley culture.
AI to me is a very interesting tool. What we now think of as AI (ChatGPT/Microsoft CoPilot) are glorified search engines that offer some more functionality, and they are quite useful. I have experimented with CoPilot at work and for use of study, and it is a far better product than Google's tired and ad-ridden search engine. I do believe AI chatbots will offer a lot of efficiency when researching, organizing data, and have great impact on software engineering and coding, for example. They are also not really AI. I don't believe that ChatGPT is a living being, but a large (exceedingly large) dataset that organizes how questions are asked differently than the "waterfall" style query system Google has previously used. It is a great tool for productivity; it is not a living being. The folks that built these systems are brilliant, but also used their brilliance to make a ton of money through suspect marketing, and built so called AI systems that are fed the bile found in the depths of Reddit forums, and unpublished vampire fan-fiction (no joke, these are some of the data sets used to train AI). No wonder these systems hallucinate answers, take things out of context, and are often wildly mis-representative of reality. The bias and hubris of the tech industry - misogynist, largely white and male, and steeped in the echo chambers of their own making, is well represented in AI programs. These tools, however, will have a great impact on many industries. The limited, money-making grifting that Google sees in there use (increased ad revenue through better targeted ads) is self-defeating. Google's little AI tooltip at the top of each search decreases click-through to actual websites. CoPilot is more sophisticated, offering an answer, as well as a source list with links. It will be interesting to see how, once these concepts and programs leave the insular culture in the tech mega-giants, what they may actually be used for. Making a fake looking fantasy image of our favourite books is largely useless, and in my opinion, AI generated images are boring as they are not made by human hand. I don't think the generative AI will be a game changer for the time being. But its applications in things like the medical field, large data sampling, administrative efficiency, and even creative ventures like video game design, may be a game changer for these industries.
This was an interesting one! Enlightening both as a sample story for the oppressive overreach of American tech companies, and as a biography of two dreamer whiz-kids who fell to grifter culture, this is one to read to get a finger on the pulse of some upcoming, possibly ground breaking, technologies, as well as a good exploration of the ethics and bias' associated within Silicon Valley culture.
July 29, 2024
Olson is very familiar with ai and the trouble it may cause. This book delves into San and Demis who own rival ai businesses. This book was both alarming and informative about ai and its uses.
August 14, 2024
Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: Sept. 10, 2024
Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg journalist who mostly writes on the technology industry, especially the influence of A.I. Her previous novel, “We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency” was written in 2012, so it has been a hot minute since Olson has journeyed into the non-fiction book world. With the ever-increasing popularity (and polarity) of AI in society, it is no surprise that this is the topic of Olson’s new work, “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World”.
“Supremacy” covers just about everything you need to know about the AI and tech industries. Olson covers the various creations that led AI to what it is today, making sure to highlight the creators themselves, as well as the tight and tense competition to create the best AI model. Like most inventions, the creators wanted to create AI to help contribute to some of the downfalls of society and use AI for good. But, as anyone who has seen “Terminator” knows, AI has some naysayers that fear for what an aware and cognisant AI could lead to. Olson doesn’t really go into too many of the details regarding the downfalls of AI, because they’re pretty obvious, but does ensure to keep the negative, as well as the positive, aspects of AI in the forefront of reader’s minds.
Like most small businesses, the initial plan was hopeful, using technology to bring positive change to a broken world. However, this was quickly brushed aside when the big wallets of investors from Microsoft and Google came along, pitting AI creators against each other in order to beat the other tech company to the punch. The fact that these two companies, two of the most powerful and richest in the world, were so focused on winning the race that they overlooked AI’s initial purpose, should be a surprise to no one, but it was interesting to read about the behind-the-scenes manipulation that both companies played equal parts in.
Olson cannot name all of her sources as a result of the powerful legal muscle of said companies, so there is a lot of “seen by someone who was there” and “as overheard by someone close to the company”, which sounds very tabloid-like. But there are very clear reasons for this and Olson even explains it herself in the afterword and to be honest, after reading this story I wouldn’t want to take on Google or Microsoft either.
“Supremacy” is an investigative look behind-the-scenes at how AI became so relevant, where it is today and what it could possibly do in the future. A must-read for tech nerds or anyone who just wants to understand a little more about this very important modern issue.
Expected publication date: Sept. 10, 2024
Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg journalist who mostly writes on the technology industry, especially the influence of A.I. Her previous novel, “We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency” was written in 2012, so it has been a hot minute since Olson has journeyed into the non-fiction book world. With the ever-increasing popularity (and polarity) of AI in society, it is no surprise that this is the topic of Olson’s new work, “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World”.
“Supremacy” covers just about everything you need to know about the AI and tech industries. Olson covers the various creations that led AI to what it is today, making sure to highlight the creators themselves, as well as the tight and tense competition to create the best AI model. Like most inventions, the creators wanted to create AI to help contribute to some of the downfalls of society and use AI for good. But, as anyone who has seen “Terminator” knows, AI has some naysayers that fear for what an aware and cognisant AI could lead to. Olson doesn’t really go into too many of the details regarding the downfalls of AI, because they’re pretty obvious, but does ensure to keep the negative, as well as the positive, aspects of AI in the forefront of reader’s minds.
Like most small businesses, the initial plan was hopeful, using technology to bring positive change to a broken world. However, this was quickly brushed aside when the big wallets of investors from Microsoft and Google came along, pitting AI creators against each other in order to beat the other tech company to the punch. The fact that these two companies, two of the most powerful and richest in the world, were so focused on winning the race that they overlooked AI’s initial purpose, should be a surprise to no one, but it was interesting to read about the behind-the-scenes manipulation that both companies played equal parts in.
Olson cannot name all of her sources as a result of the powerful legal muscle of said companies, so there is a lot of “seen by someone who was there” and “as overheard by someone close to the company”, which sounds very tabloid-like. But there are very clear reasons for this and Olson even explains it herself in the afterword and to be honest, after reading this story I wouldn’t want to take on Google or Microsoft either.
“Supremacy” is an investigative look behind-the-scenes at how AI became so relevant, where it is today and what it could possibly do in the future. A must-read for tech nerds or anyone who just wants to understand a little more about this very important modern issue.
Read
November 16, 2024This is just a book following the chronology of the founding, internal politics, history of acquisitions, and rivalry between the two leading AGI pursuing start-ups, OpenAI and DeepMind, and their leaders Demis Hassabis and Sam Altman. I think the main lesson of this book is, it doesn't matter what idealistic visions the original founders and luminaries had planned for their creations of ultimate superintelligence, in the end they cannot escape being beholden to the tech giants (Google, Microsoft, Elon Musk Corp., etc) who are funding their developments, their salaries, their whims, and who ultimately come to collect from the startups they are parenting, in the form of using their supercharged AI for their own companies' growth, bottom line, and desired designs and goals for superintelligence. I'm kind of wary of this book because the author couldn't remain neutral and couldn't help but insert her own preferences, and ideologies about AI, despite no apparent expertise or reason. These preferences are communicated subtly (or not-so-subtly) through the choice of words. The AI camp that prefers carefulness and safeguards, as well as the thought leaders who are vocal about the need to install redundancies and protections, are often labeled in this book as voices of 'doom', 'paranoia', 'pessimism', 'extreme views' (she never uses words like, 'caution', 'prudence', etc.).. no such words are bandied about the other camp, say about Larry Page and Peter Thiel or something. Their flaws are not magnified, I find the book rather selective in favoring which. Another example is labeling Sam Altman over and over as 'honorable', 'intending the good of humanity', etc without letting the facts being reported to speak for themselves. Sam Altman may indeed be all these qualities, I just felt this needed more evidence-based reporting than what was provided, given how hard this is to square with other news publications' portrayals of Sam Altman-- ambitious, unconcerned about AI safety, etc. which may be twisted portrayals too, who knows, but 'show, not tell' would really work here. Anyways, it's still an important book to read about the titans who hold the keys to our collective futures.
September 29, 2024
“The race to build the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) had started with a question: What if you could build artificial intelligence systems that were smarter than humans. The two innovators at the forefront grappled with the answer as their quests turned into a heated rivalry. Demis Hassabis believed that AGI could help us better understand the universe and drive forward scientific discovery, while Sam Altman thought it could create an abundance of wealth that would raise everyone’s living standards.”
Parmy Olson, a journalist specializing in technology, examines the rise of artificial intelligence tools, particularly chatbots, and the people behind them. The author initially focuses on Deep Mind and OpenAI, the two primary firms, and the associated later involvement of Google and Microsoft. She starts with the founding CEOs, who planned to use their products for the greater good of humanity, Demis Hassabis of DeepMind and Sam Altman OpenAI. The author tracks the ways their ideals ended up intertwined with the tech industry giants, and the results.
Olson explores two main issues surrounding AI – the idea that AI will get out of hand and damage humans (safety concerns) and the possibility of replicating existing social biases or manipulating them (ethical concerns). To some extent, she also examines large language models, which are used in AI training and learning. One of the primary drivers fueling these concerns is the same one we have seen wreak havoc in recent years – namely, that profit-driven corporations will use technology, along with personal data and habits, to increase their wealth and the expense of the social welfare. We have, of course, seen this occur repeatedly throughout history, where short term profits are valued over long-term impact. One recent example is social media, owned by tech companies, to gain huge advertising revenues while enabling misinformation to spread unchecked.
It is not really a surprise that one of the most salient points in Supremacy is that big money and power tend to win out over altruism. Entrepreneurial efforts tend to repeatedly get swallowed up by the tech giants. The author points out that there is a fundamental lack of transparency among the corporate-owned AI tools in the current technology arena. This is a concern for all of us. Olson calls for the use of tools that are above board about their learning models, and who care about ensuring that their systems do not cause harm. Luckily, there are a few altruistic attempts still being made. The example provided by the author is Anthropic and its chatbot, Claude, which is funded by philanthropists. Artificial Intelligence is here already, and further developments are coming, so in my opinion, it is important to understand what is going on with this technology.
Parmy Olson, a journalist specializing in technology, examines the rise of artificial intelligence tools, particularly chatbots, and the people behind them. The author initially focuses on Deep Mind and OpenAI, the two primary firms, and the associated later involvement of Google and Microsoft. She starts with the founding CEOs, who planned to use their products for the greater good of humanity, Demis Hassabis of DeepMind and Sam Altman OpenAI. The author tracks the ways their ideals ended up intertwined with the tech industry giants, and the results.
Olson explores two main issues surrounding AI – the idea that AI will get out of hand and damage humans (safety concerns) and the possibility of replicating existing social biases or manipulating them (ethical concerns). To some extent, she also examines large language models, which are used in AI training and learning. One of the primary drivers fueling these concerns is the same one we have seen wreak havoc in recent years – namely, that profit-driven corporations will use technology, along with personal data and habits, to increase their wealth and the expense of the social welfare. We have, of course, seen this occur repeatedly throughout history, where short term profits are valued over long-term impact. One recent example is social media, owned by tech companies, to gain huge advertising revenues while enabling misinformation to spread unchecked.
It is not really a surprise that one of the most salient points in Supremacy is that big money and power tend to win out over altruism. Entrepreneurial efforts tend to repeatedly get swallowed up by the tech giants. The author points out that there is a fundamental lack of transparency among the corporate-owned AI tools in the current technology arena. This is a concern for all of us. Olson calls for the use of tools that are above board about their learning models, and who care about ensuring that their systems do not cause harm. Luckily, there are a few altruistic attempts still being made. The example provided by the author is Anthropic and its chatbot, Claude, which is funded by philanthropists. Artificial Intelligence is here already, and further developments are coming, so in my opinion, it is important to understand what is going on with this technology.
November 2, 2024
"Supremacy" explores the rapid rise of large language models (LLMs) and the new wave of AI, focusing on two leading figures: Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind. Parmy Olson chronicles their parallel and occasionally intersecting paths, covering DeepMind's breakthrough AlphaGo victory and the subsequent rise of OpenAI with ChatGPT. The book opens with the backgrounds of Altman, who grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and Hassabis, who found his footing in London after an itinerant childhood.
Both Altman and Hassabis are deeply invested in achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Although OpenAI and DeepMind initially aspired to create economic abundance and address humanity's toughest challenges, both have pivoted towards profit-making, aligning with Big Tech—Microsoft and Google, respectively. The book distinguishes between AI safety (addressing future risks from AI) and AI ethics (focusing on present-day issues like bias in algorithms), which helps contextualize the complexity of safely deploying these models in the world.
Olson also examines how AI is strengthening Big Tech’s dominance, given its control over talent, resources, data, and application distribution—a trend likely to exacerbate global inequality. The reader gains a front-row view of OpenAI’s evolution, from its shift from nonprofit to for-profit, to the dismissal (and later reinstatement) of Sam Altman, and to the founding of Anthropic by former OpenAI researchers. Interestingly, Anthropic has aligned itself with Google and Amazon, framing AI as a battleground for tech behemoths vying to establish the next transformative platform, akin to the internet.
The book explains several complex AI concepts with effective analogies, such as the differences between supervised and unsupervised learning, diffusion and transformer architectures, and the comparison of AI to electricity. One of the standout observations is how major companies like Microsoft and Google, despite vast resources, often struggle to innovate effectively. Microsoft, for instance, has a well-funded research division that hasn’t achieved breakthroughs on the scale of DeepMind or OpenAI, while Google pioneered transformer and LaMDA models yet faltered in product integration. Throughout, Google emerges as surprisingly ineffective at maintaining and advancing its product suite—a persistent weakness.
Overall, "Supremacy" is an engaging read for those interested in tech history and the personalities driving it, though it focuses more on individual quirks than on the broader business and technical dimensions. It serves as a fitting sequel (of sorts) to Cade Metz's Genius Makers, which delves into the pioneers of deep learning and the field's early days.
Both Altman and Hassabis are deeply invested in achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Although OpenAI and DeepMind initially aspired to create economic abundance and address humanity's toughest challenges, both have pivoted towards profit-making, aligning with Big Tech—Microsoft and Google, respectively. The book distinguishes between AI safety (addressing future risks from AI) and AI ethics (focusing on present-day issues like bias in algorithms), which helps contextualize the complexity of safely deploying these models in the world.
Olson also examines how AI is strengthening Big Tech’s dominance, given its control over talent, resources, data, and application distribution—a trend likely to exacerbate global inequality. The reader gains a front-row view of OpenAI’s evolution, from its shift from nonprofit to for-profit, to the dismissal (and later reinstatement) of Sam Altman, and to the founding of Anthropic by former OpenAI researchers. Interestingly, Anthropic has aligned itself with Google and Amazon, framing AI as a battleground for tech behemoths vying to establish the next transformative platform, akin to the internet.
The book explains several complex AI concepts with effective analogies, such as the differences between supervised and unsupervised learning, diffusion and transformer architectures, and the comparison of AI to electricity. One of the standout observations is how major companies like Microsoft and Google, despite vast resources, often struggle to innovate effectively. Microsoft, for instance, has a well-funded research division that hasn’t achieved breakthroughs on the scale of DeepMind or OpenAI, while Google pioneered transformer and LaMDA models yet faltered in product integration. Throughout, Google emerges as surprisingly ineffective at maintaining and advancing its product suite—a persistent weakness.
Overall, "Supremacy" is an engaging read for those interested in tech history and the personalities driving it, though it focuses more on individual quirks than on the broader business and technical dimensions. It serves as a fitting sequel (of sorts) to Cade Metz's Genius Makers, which delves into the pioneers of deep learning and the field's early days.
November 12, 2024
This tells the personal story of the office politics and such behind the major players in building ChatGPT and the other top-end large language models. You know how Oppenheimer was just about a bunch of peoples' everyday interactions and conversations, but because they were building something world-changing it lent it some gravitas? This was like that. My Twitter feed has been carefully curated to only contain interesting technical stuff and avoid politics and drama, but the overlap is enough that the main drama in this book (like the firing of Sam Altman) I saw play out there.
I did take issue with the author's take on a lot of these events. She clearly feels that the important dangers of AI are racism, sexism, and corporate control of information, and that any notion of AI being dangerous to humanity (Doom) as a whole is silly. She is sympathetic to the women and minorities who loudly raised these issues, and doesn't have much sympathy for the powerful white men who felt other issues were more critical. A corollary to this is that whenever anyone in the book says they are worried about Doom, she has to find or invent an ulterior motive. Same for any talk of Effective Altruism, or Basic Income, or the other new ideas that came out of the rationalist community and have dominated the conversation in tech circles for the last 15 years. She just can't take it at face value that anyone could actually believe this stuff, when they are constantly coming out and saying they believe it.
Anyway, it was nice to get some background on who the key players are as people and their relationships. I did submit a book proposal to an agent to write something like this a couple years back, though mine would have focused a lot more on how it all works and a lot less on the people involved.
I did take issue with the author's take on a lot of these events. She clearly feels that the important dangers of AI are racism, sexism, and corporate control of information, and that any notion of AI being dangerous to humanity (Doom) as a whole is silly. She is sympathetic to the women and minorities who loudly raised these issues, and doesn't have much sympathy for the powerful white men who felt other issues were more critical. A corollary to this is that whenever anyone in the book says they are worried about Doom, she has to find or invent an ulterior motive. Same for any talk of Effective Altruism, or Basic Income, or the other new ideas that came out of the rationalist community and have dominated the conversation in tech circles for the last 15 years. She just can't take it at face value that anyone could actually believe this stuff, when they are constantly coming out and saying they believe it.
Anyway, it was nice to get some background on who the key players are as people and their relationships. I did submit a book proposal to an agent to write something like this a couple years back, though mine would have focused a lot more on how it all works and a lot less on the people involved.
October 8, 2024
If you're curious about the future of technology, "Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World" by Parmy Olson is a must-read. Olson brilliantly pulls you into the fast-evolving world of artificial intelligence, spotlighting the visionaries behind it, like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind. Their work isn’t just shaping the tech world—it’s redefining the future we all will live in.
What makes this book stand out? Olson has a unique talent for making complex AI concepts easy to grasp. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or just wondering how AI will affect your daily life, this book reads like a gripping story, yet it's packed with serious research. You’ll feel like you’re diving into a futuristic novel, except the stakes are real.
The ethical dilemmas, the race for dominance, and the questions of how AI will redefine industries—all of this is tackled in an engaging and thoughtful way. "Supremacy" doesn’t just tell you about the technology, it makes you think deeply about its impact on society, your job, and even global politics.
So, if you’re ready to explore how AI is transforming the world around us—and get a glimpse of what's coming next—grab this book. It’s thought-provoking, timely, and incredibly relevant. You won’t want to miss it!
What makes this book stand out? Olson has a unique talent for making complex AI concepts easy to grasp. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or just wondering how AI will affect your daily life, this book reads like a gripping story, yet it's packed with serious research. You’ll feel like you’re diving into a futuristic novel, except the stakes are real.
The ethical dilemmas, the race for dominance, and the questions of how AI will redefine industries—all of this is tackled in an engaging and thoughtful way. "Supremacy" doesn’t just tell you about the technology, it makes you think deeply about its impact on society, your job, and even global politics.
So, if you’re ready to explore how AI is transforming the world around us—and get a glimpse of what's coming next—grab this book. It’s thought-provoking, timely, and incredibly relevant. You won’t want to miss it!
October 8, 2024
Half fascinating and half terrifying exploration of AI
August 10, 2024
Supremacy is a book charting the race between OpenAI and Deep Mind to bring out their AI products, focusing on their founders, Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis. Journalist Parmy Olson explores these two founders' starts in the tech industry, interest in AGI (artificial general intelligence) and ultimately the race between their two companies (and the tech giants behind them) to have the best AI product on the market in this generative AI age.
As someone who reads and teaches people about AI, I was interested to see how this quite recent race would be turned into a book. The narrative starts early and quite broad, looking at Altman and Hassabis' initial failures and interest in AI, as well as early tech industry contacts, and I found this part of the book was a bit too obsessed with the 'tech genius' idea, not just from them but around people like Elon Musk as well. Thankfully, as the book goes on, Olson moves away from this idea and looks more broadly at the big picture, including the struggles around both ideas of AI safety and of AI ethics, and the need for the AI world to be dominated by existing tech giants like Microsoft and Google.
The part of the book describing the invention of the 'transformer' and the impact of this on work to build better AI models was a highlight as it was an approachable explanation of why this breakthrough was so important, helping people to understand why these huge AI products seemed to come out of nowhere a few years later. I found the section that explores how effective altruism ended up connected to some of the movements in AI also interesting, showcasing how it is often the ideas of billionaires that have a massive impact on world-changing technologies. There was plenty I learnt from the book, even as someone who has a fair interest in the topic, and knowing where these companies came from is a useful part of critiquing and evaluating generative AI.
I did find that sometimes the book was so focused on tech billionaires and companies that it dragged, sometimes accepting at face value what these people say and argue for. Especially by the end, there was decent discussion of many of the issues surrounding AI, but I did think some were notably absent, particularly the climate impact of the GPU power needed and the human cost of data labelling for training data. The climate angle in particular I felt was needed, given that these companies often try and hide their negative climate cost, and it links back to other technologies like cryptocurrency that are mentioned in passing in the book. I do think that the way the book clearly distinguishes between AI safety and AI ethics, and how these can even be in conflict with each other, was very useful, especially for raising awareness of these to a general audience reading the book to learn more about the world of AI as it has become.
Overall, Supremacy is a detailed account of these two AI juggernauts over the past fifteen years and the road to get to tools like ChatGPT that have become household names, and it is a good place for people who want to know where AI has come from recently to start. For me, I found it did lean too heavily on ideas of the solitary tech genius billionaire and I wasn't interested in that much detail about conversations between them, but the book didn't go entirely in for the AI hype and did address a lot of the issues and controversies around AI at the moment.
As someone who reads and teaches people about AI, I was interested to see how this quite recent race would be turned into a book. The narrative starts early and quite broad, looking at Altman and Hassabis' initial failures and interest in AI, as well as early tech industry contacts, and I found this part of the book was a bit too obsessed with the 'tech genius' idea, not just from them but around people like Elon Musk as well. Thankfully, as the book goes on, Olson moves away from this idea and looks more broadly at the big picture, including the struggles around both ideas of AI safety and of AI ethics, and the need for the AI world to be dominated by existing tech giants like Microsoft and Google.
The part of the book describing the invention of the 'transformer' and the impact of this on work to build better AI models was a highlight as it was an approachable explanation of why this breakthrough was so important, helping people to understand why these huge AI products seemed to come out of nowhere a few years later. I found the section that explores how effective altruism ended up connected to some of the movements in AI also interesting, showcasing how it is often the ideas of billionaires that have a massive impact on world-changing technologies. There was plenty I learnt from the book, even as someone who has a fair interest in the topic, and knowing where these companies came from is a useful part of critiquing and evaluating generative AI.
I did find that sometimes the book was so focused on tech billionaires and companies that it dragged, sometimes accepting at face value what these people say and argue for. Especially by the end, there was decent discussion of many of the issues surrounding AI, but I did think some were notably absent, particularly the climate impact of the GPU power needed and the human cost of data labelling for training data. The climate angle in particular I felt was needed, given that these companies often try and hide their negative climate cost, and it links back to other technologies like cryptocurrency that are mentioned in passing in the book. I do think that the way the book clearly distinguishes between AI safety and AI ethics, and how these can even be in conflict with each other, was very useful, especially for raising awareness of these to a general audience reading the book to learn more about the world of AI as it has become.
Overall, Supremacy is a detailed account of these two AI juggernauts over the past fifteen years and the road to get to tools like ChatGPT that have become household names, and it is a good place for people who want to know where AI has come from recently to start. For me, I found it did lean too heavily on ideas of the solitary tech genius billionaire and I wasn't interested in that much detail about conversations between them, but the book didn't go entirely in for the AI hype and did address a lot of the issues and controversies around AI at the moment.
October 27, 2024
A quick read, basically the story of the rivalry between Hassabis and Altman, both caught in the tremendous forces of capitalism. A good glimpse into where the tech world is, and is headed.
I would rate it higher, but although it's a good contemporary account, I kind of doubt this will stand the test of time, it will be more of a back-then. Although with Hassabis's Novel, who knows, maybe it will count as prescient.
I would rate it higher, but although it's a good contemporary account, I kind of doubt this will stand the test of time, it will be more of a back-then. Although with Hassabis's Novel, who knows, maybe it will count as prescient.
September 20, 2024
Truly fascinating. Biased? Probably. But fascinating nonetheless.
September 22, 2024
Prompted by an ad that came my way on social media, I decided to download an audio version of this new book by Parmy Olson. I found it fascinating.
I learnt a lot from it, about the personalities involved in building AGI, and about the dynamics of trying to create beneficial AGI in the midst of a dysfunctional world. The book also caused me to reflect on what's involved in leading world-transforming projects.
I was absorbed by it all the way to the end. I continued to learn more about what has been happening behind the scenes at OpenAI/Microsoft, DeepMind/Google, and at other companies trying to build AGI.
The narrative makes it clear that the *real* AI control problem isn't, can humanity control or align advanced AI. It's this: Can humanity control or align the organisations that are racing to build advanced AI?
Or at another level: Can humanity control or align the hypercompetitive geo-economic system under which advanced technology is developed and deployed?
The first part of any such control is to spread an deeper understanding of what has actually been happening. There's plenty of understanding in this book!
Sadly, on some of the mailing lists that I follow, various self-described AI experts seem resolutely stuck within their own ideological (highly metaphysical) explanations of AI. Some of them seem not to have budged in their viewpoints for 40 years.
But if they were to read "Supremacy", the force of the human tales it contains - the dramas of the changing personal justifications that the key players tell themselves, in the light of huge commercial pressures - might (perhaps!) cause these so-called experts to re-evaluate matters.
As a side-point, the changing hopes of DeepMind management regarding breaking free from too close an embrace by Google, reminded me of the changing hopes of my colleagues and I in Symbian regarding breaking free from too close an embrace by Nokia and the other mobile phone giants.
(I tell the story of *two* different attempts to create a "Big Symbian" (combining Symbian and Nokia's S60 teams, and being spun out to control our own destiny) in Chapter 15, "The near-miss merger", of my 2014 book "Smartphones and Beyond" https://smartphonesandbeyond.com/chap....)
In retrospect, the ambitions for the formation of a "Big Symbian" are often said to have been naïve, although (as my book explores in various chapters) there were many roads not travelled, that could have resulted in significantly different outcomes.
Similarly, the ambitions of Demis Hassabis and other DeepMind executives for greater independence from Google may likewise seem naïve in retrospect. However, if OpenAI hadn't stumbled onto stunning success by adopting transformers, things could indeed have been very different.
The back story of transformers is one of the most eye-opening features of "Supremacy". Transformers were invented at Google but then held back there, for reasons similar to what readers of Clayton Christensen ("Innovator's Dilemma") will understand.
Highly successful companies often fluff opportunities for bold innovation. Microsoft mishandled the rise of smartphones, being too protective of their Windows brand. Intel mishandled the rise of AI, focusing too much on CPUs. We could also mention Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm...
(I analyse some of these failures, and offer suggestions to avoid similar failures in the future, in Chapter 6, "Disruptions", of my 2021 book "Vital Foresight" https://transpolitica.org/projects/vi...)
As "Supremacy" makes clear, Google recently came close to repeating such a failure. However, the lesson that various tech executives may take from that near-miss may be a dangerous one. They have entered a race in which considerations of safety have been pushed far down in priority.
In summary, I heartily recommend "Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the race that will change the world" by Parmy Olson. It's an engaging read, and will leave big important questions in your mind - questions of the centralisation of power, the clash of personal idealism and real-world commercial pressures, the failure modes of self-regulation, the failure modes of a corporate culture being too narrow, and, indeed, the profound possibilities that AGI might enable, far sooner than most people used to think would be possible.
I learnt a lot from it, about the personalities involved in building AGI, and about the dynamics of trying to create beneficial AGI in the midst of a dysfunctional world. The book also caused me to reflect on what's involved in leading world-transforming projects.
I was absorbed by it all the way to the end. I continued to learn more about what has been happening behind the scenes at OpenAI/Microsoft, DeepMind/Google, and at other companies trying to build AGI.
The narrative makes it clear that the *real* AI control problem isn't, can humanity control or align advanced AI. It's this: Can humanity control or align the organisations that are racing to build advanced AI?
Or at another level: Can humanity control or align the hypercompetitive geo-economic system under which advanced technology is developed and deployed?
The first part of any such control is to spread an deeper understanding of what has actually been happening. There's plenty of understanding in this book!
Sadly, on some of the mailing lists that I follow, various self-described AI experts seem resolutely stuck within their own ideological (highly metaphysical) explanations of AI. Some of them seem not to have budged in their viewpoints for 40 years.
But if they were to read "Supremacy", the force of the human tales it contains - the dramas of the changing personal justifications that the key players tell themselves, in the light of huge commercial pressures - might (perhaps!) cause these so-called experts to re-evaluate matters.
As a side-point, the changing hopes of DeepMind management regarding breaking free from too close an embrace by Google, reminded me of the changing hopes of my colleagues and I in Symbian regarding breaking free from too close an embrace by Nokia and the other mobile phone giants.
(I tell the story of *two* different attempts to create a "Big Symbian" (combining Symbian and Nokia's S60 teams, and being spun out to control our own destiny) in Chapter 15, "The near-miss merger", of my 2014 book "Smartphones and Beyond" https://smartphonesandbeyond.com/chap....)
In retrospect, the ambitions for the formation of a "Big Symbian" are often said to have been naïve, although (as my book explores in various chapters) there were many roads not travelled, that could have resulted in significantly different outcomes.
Similarly, the ambitions of Demis Hassabis and other DeepMind executives for greater independence from Google may likewise seem naïve in retrospect. However, if OpenAI hadn't stumbled onto stunning success by adopting transformers, things could indeed have been very different.
The back story of transformers is one of the most eye-opening features of "Supremacy". Transformers were invented at Google but then held back there, for reasons similar to what readers of Clayton Christensen ("Innovator's Dilemma") will understand.
Highly successful companies often fluff opportunities for bold innovation. Microsoft mishandled the rise of smartphones, being too protective of their Windows brand. Intel mishandled the rise of AI, focusing too much on CPUs. We could also mention Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm...
(I analyse some of these failures, and offer suggestions to avoid similar failures in the future, in Chapter 6, "Disruptions", of my 2021 book "Vital Foresight" https://transpolitica.org/projects/vi...)
As "Supremacy" makes clear, Google recently came close to repeating such a failure. However, the lesson that various tech executives may take from that near-miss may be a dangerous one. They have entered a race in which considerations of safety have been pushed far down in priority.
In summary, I heartily recommend "Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the race that will change the world" by Parmy Olson. It's an engaging read, and will leave big important questions in your mind - questions of the centralisation of power, the clash of personal idealism and real-world commercial pressures, the failure modes of self-regulation, the failure modes of a corporate culture being too narrow, and, indeed, the profound possibilities that AGI might enable, far sooner than most people used to think would be possible.
August 27, 2024
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World by Parmy Olson is a timely and meticulously researched exploration of the rapid advancements in AI, focusing on the intense rivalry between Sam Altman and Dennis Hassabis. This nonfiction audiobook, narrated by Lisa Flanagan, dives deep into the ethical, societal, and philosophical questions surrounding AI development. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the current and future state of AI. As someone who prefers listening to nonfiction over reading it, I found this audiobook to be fantastic!
Narration: Lisa Flanagan’s narration is a standout feature of this audiobook. Her voice perfectly suits the material, providing clear distinctions between the various individuals and concepts discussed. The pacing is well-matched to the content, making it easy to follow the chronological progression of events and the back-and-forth narrative between Altman and Hassabis. Flanagan’s delivery brings the text to life, making complex subject matter accessible and engaging. If you’re choosing between formats, the audiobook is an excellent option, thanks to Flanagan’s superb narration that enhances the overall experience.
Recommendation: Parmy Olson’s book showcases her ability to clearly present complex topics through excellent reporting. Olson doesn’t shy away from the hard questions, delving into the lack of transparency in the industry and the ethical dilemmas faced by those on the cutting edge of AI development. The story also features other Silicon Valley power players, including Elon Musk, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Bankman-Fried, offering a comprehensive view of the broader AI landscape. The flow is smooth, with clear transitions between sections, making it easy to follow without getting lost in the technical details.
The book touches on several critical issues, including AI’s rapid deployment to the public, its strange hallucinations, lack of regulation, the proxy wars between Google and Microsoft, bias and prejudice, mission drift, and AI’s real power over human lives (such as its use in credit scoring and mortgage approval).
Supremacy offers a thought-provoking look at the potential futures AI could bring, whether it leads us toward utopia or something far more ominous. My only wish is that the book delved deeper into AI’s relation to eugenics and sustainability, but overall, it’s a fascinating and essential listen—especially if you, like me, are concerned about a possible robot apocalypse!
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
Narration: Lisa Flanagan’s narration is a standout feature of this audiobook. Her voice perfectly suits the material, providing clear distinctions between the various individuals and concepts discussed. The pacing is well-matched to the content, making it easy to follow the chronological progression of events and the back-and-forth narrative between Altman and Hassabis. Flanagan’s delivery brings the text to life, making complex subject matter accessible and engaging. If you’re choosing between formats, the audiobook is an excellent option, thanks to Flanagan’s superb narration that enhances the overall experience.
Recommendation: Parmy Olson’s book showcases her ability to clearly present complex topics through excellent reporting. Olson doesn’t shy away from the hard questions, delving into the lack of transparency in the industry and the ethical dilemmas faced by those on the cutting edge of AI development. The story also features other Silicon Valley power players, including Elon Musk, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Bankman-Fried, offering a comprehensive view of the broader AI landscape. The flow is smooth, with clear transitions between sections, making it easy to follow without getting lost in the technical details.
The book touches on several critical issues, including AI’s rapid deployment to the public, its strange hallucinations, lack of regulation, the proxy wars between Google and Microsoft, bias and prejudice, mission drift, and AI’s real power over human lives (such as its use in credit scoring and mortgage approval).
Supremacy offers a thought-provoking look at the potential futures AI could bring, whether it leads us toward utopia or something far more ominous. My only wish is that the book delved deeper into AI’s relation to eugenics and sustainability, but overall, it’s a fascinating and essential listen—especially if you, like me, are concerned about a possible robot apocalypse!
Thank you, NetGalley, for providing an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.
August 27, 2024
I don’t have much background knowledge on AI, and I really enjoyed this overview of how machine learning and AI have grown over the years, intertwining its greatness against fears of bad ethics, and AI taking over the world… will we become a paper clip?
Altman & Hassabis are both brilliant, and they have made a gigantic impact in this community. I was shocked to find out that they say they don’t care about the money, and wanted this system to redistribute goods… however we have a capitalist society and are tech companies morally sound?
A great read with a lot of research. Highly recommend! Thank you NetGalley & Macmillan Publishing for an ARC.
Altman & Hassabis are both brilliant, and they have made a gigantic impact in this community. I was shocked to find out that they say they don’t care about the money, and wanted this system to redistribute goods… however we have a capitalist society and are tech companies morally sound?
A great read with a lot of research. Highly recommend! Thank you NetGalley & Macmillan Publishing for an ARC.
October 22, 2024
An epically build-up story with so much detail and honest revelations that even its expected "let's see what happens" ending doesn't hurt that much.
November 11, 2024
repetitive in some places, leaving gaps in others— overall a solid summary of how AI development has ended up further entrenching the power of tech giants, particularly Microsoft and Google
educational for me, but would be less so for those who’ve more closely followed the rise of GenAI
read via audiobook
educational for me, but would be less so for those who’ve more closely followed the rise of GenAI
read via audiobook
November 3, 2024
Very informative first third. After that, also some interesting bits but I could have done without the strong political activist undertone.
July 15, 2024
A vital book for understanding how we got to this current moment in AI. Framing the book as a compare and contrast between OpenAI's Sam Altman and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis is a great approach, and I feel like I learnt a lot about how both men got to where they are today. The last third or so of the book, covering the launch of ChatGPT to the present day, felt less engaging, possibly just because these events are so recent and so well covered, but it is still a good summary for anyone who hasn't been following every twist and turn. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
June 14, 2024
Thank you to both #NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me an advance copy of Parmy Olson’s #nonfiction work, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World, in exchange for an honest review.
#Supremacy is a well-written and researched nonfiction account about the birth of two leading #AI firms, their creators, and the rivalry between the two businesses and competing AI technologies. The text reads closer to a #fiction novel in regard to its flow, style, and interesting subject matter. The author is billed as a renowned tech journalist, and it is evident why upon reading the first chapter.
Supremacy initially intrigued me due to its description claiming that it would alert readers to the threats of AI and the dangers the current creators are ignoring. Unfortunately, this is more about the creators than the technology itself.
If you enjoy reading #biographies about tech moguls, then this book is absolutely for you. The closest comparison is the recent trend of streaming mini-series concerning the rise and fall of certain #techstartups, such as #Apple’s WeCrashed, #Hulu’s The Dropout, and #Netflix’s Super Pumped. It would not be surprising to see Supremacy’s account of #OpenAI and #DeepMind on this list in the near future.
#Supremacy is a well-written and researched nonfiction account about the birth of two leading #AI firms, their creators, and the rivalry between the two businesses and competing AI technologies. The text reads closer to a #fiction novel in regard to its flow, style, and interesting subject matter. The author is billed as a renowned tech journalist, and it is evident why upon reading the first chapter.
Supremacy initially intrigued me due to its description claiming that it would alert readers to the threats of AI and the dangers the current creators are ignoring. Unfortunately, this is more about the creators than the technology itself.
If you enjoy reading #biographies about tech moguls, then this book is absolutely for you. The closest comparison is the recent trend of streaming mini-series concerning the rise and fall of certain #techstartups, such as #Apple’s WeCrashed, #Hulu’s The Dropout, and #Netflix’s Super Pumped. It would not be surprising to see Supremacy’s account of #OpenAI and #DeepMind on this list in the near future.
June 7, 2024
Wow. An eye opening view into the AI landscape. An intriguing deep dive highlighting OpenAI and DeepMind and how they are shaping current society. The story is both inspiring and and disheartening. A solid read everyone should check out.
Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the arc.
Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the arc.
October 8, 2024
"When technologists imagined what a superintelligence could do if it went rogue, they were seeing echoes of themselves in a world where businesses were allowed to become unstoppable global monopolies. The most transformative technology in recent memory was being developed by handfuls of people who were turning a deaf ear to its real-world side effects, who struggled to resist the desire to win big. The real dangers weren't so much from AI itself but from the capricious whims of the humans running it.
There's a famous saying in chess that tactics win games and strategies win tournaments. Both Altman and Hassabis had employed novel tactics on their quest to build AGI, and as that quest turned into a race they aligned themselves more closely with the most likely winners of the tournament: Microsoft, and Google. As the dreams of both men served to fortify two corporate giants they strengthened their own positions too."
- Parmy Olson, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
Like everything AI-related, this is a book destined to go very quickly out of date, but it avoids the major pitfalls of contemporary tech journalism by being more interested in the organisation of power than its capabilities. Rather than get caught up in asinine speculations about whether or not AI will turn us into all paper-clips, Olson is much more interested in the question of who controls AI, and how a hunger for the large-scale capital investment required to create it puts the lie to every nerdy fantasist who thought their half-baked ideals could override the eternal historical dynamics of power accumulation.
Olson structures her book as a dual biography of tech-rivals Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis before positioning this rivalry within the context of the wider AI-tech sector she sees as coalescing around their efforts. This is a little too Great Man Theory for me, particularly as the early chapters are historiographically throttled by the inevitably tiresome drip-feed of colourful anecdotes about their childhoods and rise to wealth that these men's PR teams have successfully cultivated, but the real meat of the book is in its later narrative of inter-corporate backstabbing, misdirected research projects leading teams into unproductive deadlocks, and the seedy backroom dealing of big businesses with the public AI organisations claiming to be better than them.
It's a topical book so there's always going to be gaps. If I wanted to be a pedant I could say that her coverage of the online rationalist communities who propagated the myopic half-wit ideologies of these movements gets a pretty shallow synopsis, and her top-down view of AI companies' conflicts with copyright law never gets into the real existential weeds of why so many people oppose mechanistic incursions into human creativity built on theft and livelihood carnage. But this is a history of corporate management more than anything else, so I don't have it in me to complain about this all that passionately.
The surprise highlight of the book is her account of Sam Altman's farcical ousting and subsequent reinstatement by the OpenAI board in November 2023. Sam Altman, after having frequently reassured the public that he believed in being held to account, and that he had designed a governing board who could fire him at any time, subsequently put the lie to that fact when his governing board suddenly couldn't fire him. The conventional accounts of this tend to be something along the lines of 'a cabal of AI decelerationists on the board tried to backstab poor Sam but his workers pulled rank to save their beloved visionary leader.'
Olson pushes back against this by giving more credence to the board's account of just how deceptive and untrustworthy Altman really was in his company's dealings, as well as the frankly creepy cult of personality that he's cultivated via his long-standing habit of performative utterances about the dangers of the technologies he promotes. Furthermore, the spontaneous groundswell of support from his employees is given a more cynical gloss by highlighting the upcoming stock interests OpenAI employees had been set to receive just before Altman's ousting which the board's more cautious approach threatened to undermine. With OpenAI having recently scrapped its non-profit status, Olson's sceptical, materialist account of moral corruption and capitalist sleaze seems hard to dispute.
For being penned so close to the coal-face of an inherently destabilising technology with ambiguous future scope Olson has done a pretty fine job at giving a first stab at this history. The nightmare makes its morning yawn, and our photographers have snapped their first images of the beast's smacking lips in their attempt to capture the length of its shadowed teeth.
September 10, 2024
***ARC received from St. Martins Press and NetGalley in exchange for honest review, opinions are all my own. Thank you!***
Supremacy lays out the story of two companies, OpenAI and DeepMind and their founders Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis in their quest to create a state of the art AI program that can.
OpenAI is a US company in Silicon Valley so I had more knowledge and information about them and Altman so I found it more interesting to learn about Hassabi and DeepMind located in London. Hassabi has a really interesting take on how to create and train an AI program tending seeing how his history in gaming has influenced him. I do appreciate how he really stuck to his beliefs even if it put him right at the front of the race.
I found it fascinating how both of these companies really started with great ideology but as with anything that comes with technology they need money. Even those that really believe in what they are doing aren’t going to turn down that big pay check when big tech comes knocking with all the right sales pitches. For both companies that seemed to think they could stay one step ahead of the game they easily fell victim to the promises. Big tech like Google, Microsoft and Meta did not get where they were without being cutthroat in how they controlled, bought out or simply drove into bankruptcy the smaller companies that didn’t fall in line with them. At the heart of everything is the drive to make as much money as they can for their shareholders and it was interesting to see how these companies thought they could play against the big guys and come out as winners especially when they took money from big tech to advance their research. But that is the reality that the book lays out on tech, ideology will always get lost when it comes to money.
The writing is good but at times it can tend to get a little heavy in details. The author is a journalist and that really shows in her writing styles, at times feeling like an extended article and at others like a detail heavy research paper. It can cause some of the sections to fill a little stale and hard to get there. Plus with all the abbreviations and names and company names it can get a little overwhelming for a a reader just starting to dip their toes into the world of AI technology. I think if you had been studying this or at least were more familiar with many of these companies wouldn’t feel as overwhelming of a read. It doesn’t take away at all from the book, she does a great job of bringing the history of AI and the companies into a book that is still approachable for the everyday reader. It also never felt like she was trying to be all doom and gloom, nor cast one company as better than the other. It was a fair look at each company and their approach to how they got to where we are today. Even the big tech companies were cast fair, even if in a little more harsh light but thats just the truth of how the big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have evolved from their earlier ideas.
I wish there had been more coverage about the severe issues that comes along with AI. While it is covered with some fascinating women that are working to call out the sexism and racism that can be found in AI I feel like it could have done more. It does a well enough job pointing out how these companies are feeding the program with data from Reddit of all places. Not a surprise that the programs start to spew out racism, the program will only be as good as the human data it is fed and humans are deeply flawed individuals. Not to mention the ethical issues that have arisen in generative AI having stolen from authors and artists in order to learn how to create that companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft have been less than forthcoming on.
Supremacy is a fascinating look at the history of the companies that helped build AI. Its also a bit of a reminder that AI is a very powerful tool in the hands of people that may not have consumers best interest at heart and we as consumers need to hold them responsible in how it continues to be used.
Supremacy lays out the story of two companies, OpenAI and DeepMind and their founders Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis in their quest to create a state of the art AI program that can.
OpenAI is a US company in Silicon Valley so I had more knowledge and information about them and Altman so I found it more interesting to learn about Hassabi and DeepMind located in London. Hassabi has a really interesting take on how to create and train an AI program tending seeing how his history in gaming has influenced him. I do appreciate how he really stuck to his beliefs even if it put him right at the front of the race.
I found it fascinating how both of these companies really started with great ideology but as with anything that comes with technology they need money. Even those that really believe in what they are doing aren’t going to turn down that big pay check when big tech comes knocking with all the right sales pitches. For both companies that seemed to think they could stay one step ahead of the game they easily fell victim to the promises. Big tech like Google, Microsoft and Meta did not get where they were without being cutthroat in how they controlled, bought out or simply drove into bankruptcy the smaller companies that didn’t fall in line with them. At the heart of everything is the drive to make as much money as they can for their shareholders and it was interesting to see how these companies thought they could play against the big guys and come out as winners especially when they took money from big tech to advance their research. But that is the reality that the book lays out on tech, ideology will always get lost when it comes to money.
The writing is good but at times it can tend to get a little heavy in details. The author is a journalist and that really shows in her writing styles, at times feeling like an extended article and at others like a detail heavy research paper. It can cause some of the sections to fill a little stale and hard to get there. Plus with all the abbreviations and names and company names it can get a little overwhelming for a a reader just starting to dip their toes into the world of AI technology. I think if you had been studying this or at least were more familiar with many of these companies wouldn’t feel as overwhelming of a read. It doesn’t take away at all from the book, she does a great job of bringing the history of AI and the companies into a book that is still approachable for the everyday reader. It also never felt like she was trying to be all doom and gloom, nor cast one company as better than the other. It was a fair look at each company and their approach to how they got to where we are today. Even the big tech companies were cast fair, even if in a little more harsh light but thats just the truth of how the big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have evolved from their earlier ideas.
I wish there had been more coverage about the severe issues that comes along with AI. While it is covered with some fascinating women that are working to call out the sexism and racism that can be found in AI I feel like it could have done more. It does a well enough job pointing out how these companies are feeding the program with data from Reddit of all places. Not a surprise that the programs start to spew out racism, the program will only be as good as the human data it is fed and humans are deeply flawed individuals. Not to mention the ethical issues that have arisen in generative AI having stolen from authors and artists in order to learn how to create that companies like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft have been less than forthcoming on.
Supremacy is a fascinating look at the history of the companies that helped build AI. Its also a bit of a reminder that AI is a very powerful tool in the hands of people that may not have consumers best interest at heart and we as consumers need to hold them responsible in how it continues to be used.
November 4, 2024
This book made me sad and angry.
In Feb 2024, when 14yr old Sewell Setzer III had his last conversation with his companion.ai chatbot, writing to the bot:
“I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany.” “I love you too, Daenero,” the chatbot responded, “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.”
“What if I told you I could come home right now?” Setzer continued, leading the chatbot to respond, “... please do, my sweet king.”
The young boy then put his phone down, picked up a gun and killed himself. What further proof will be required that unregulated AI is killing us? There's a lawsuit against companion.ai and Google but as illustrated in this book and based on Google's response, 'Google had only made a licensing agreement with Character.ai and did not own the startup or maintain an ownership stake.' we're doomed. Companion.AI's response was even worse, “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family. As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously.” Basically, "thoughts & prayers." These events transpired after this book went to press but the writing is on the wall that this would eventually happen.
This book is a recent history of the key players, developments and trends detailing how we got here and, unfortunately based on history we can infer where we are going - it's not pretty. This is yet another deeply disturbing book about fevered egos, unregulated capitalism, hubris and the cost to society. It's a tale as old as time - follow the money.
Yes, there were a few too many times this book felt repetitive, and the manner in which the author introduces a concept or issue can often be... jumbled. For example, she referenced how AI will often hallucinate and about 40 pgs later wrote "ChatGPT also couldn't seem to stop making things up, a phenomena that experts called 'hallucinations.'" This backward form of writing happened a few times. In fact, the structure and sequencing often felt... sloppy and my gut is it would have benefited from another pass or two by a solid editor.
Still, it's absolutely worth reading given how critical this information is to the health and survival of humanity. No, there are no solutions offered, it's not that kind of book. However from the material presented it's clear that breaking up the mega corporations, and creating an independent regulatory body that slows down development would be obvious steps. Will this happen - ask ChatGPT.
In Feb 2024, when 14yr old Sewell Setzer III had his last conversation with his companion.ai chatbot, writing to the bot:
“I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany.” “I love you too, Daenero,” the chatbot responded, “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.”
“What if I told you I could come home right now?” Setzer continued, leading the chatbot to respond, “... please do, my sweet king.”
The young boy then put his phone down, picked up a gun and killed himself. What further proof will be required that unregulated AI is killing us? There's a lawsuit against companion.ai and Google but as illustrated in this book and based on Google's response, 'Google had only made a licensing agreement with Character.ai and did not own the startup or maintain an ownership stake.' we're doomed. Companion.AI's response was even worse, “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of one of our users and want to express our deepest condolences to the family. As a company, we take the safety of our users very seriously.” Basically, "thoughts & prayers." These events transpired after this book went to press but the writing is on the wall that this would eventually happen.
This book is a recent history of the key players, developments and trends detailing how we got here and, unfortunately based on history we can infer where we are going - it's not pretty. This is yet another deeply disturbing book about fevered egos, unregulated capitalism, hubris and the cost to society. It's a tale as old as time - follow the money.
Yes, there were a few too many times this book felt repetitive, and the manner in which the author introduces a concept or issue can often be... jumbled. For example, she referenced how AI will often hallucinate and about 40 pgs later wrote "ChatGPT also couldn't seem to stop making things up, a phenomena that experts called 'hallucinations.'" This backward form of writing happened a few times. In fact, the structure and sequencing often felt... sloppy and my gut is it would have benefited from another pass or two by a solid editor.
Still, it's absolutely worth reading given how critical this information is to the health and survival of humanity. No, there are no solutions offered, it's not that kind of book. However from the material presented it's clear that breaking up the mega corporations, and creating an independent regulatory body that slows down development would be obvious steps. Will this happen - ask ChatGPT.
November 15, 2024
Parmy Olson has done a great job of showing us where we are, how we got here, and where we’re likely to go in terms of the AI “revolution”, and she’s keeping things up-to-the-minute current as this book ends with events IN 2024. AI is a fast moving train(wreck?) and for those of us (raises hand) without a working knowledge of the deeper tech this tool involves get a crash course in the subject to bring us up to date in “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World”.
When we as readers are treated to a moment when, in the midst of a heated argument between executives and researchers at two of the largest companies in the world today (Apple and Google), in which one calls the other a “speciest” for failing to give proper respect to the future generations of hybrid/synthetic life forms, we realize all of a sudden just how far into sci-fi reality we have and/or are living. Plans to intergrate with AI to enter the online world during the singularity, preserving brains for posthumous preservation and reactivation, companies using the “big fears” of “paperclipping” and human decimation to sell the tech itself (“If it’s that dangerous in the long-term it has to be able to elevate my business now”), ethics panels formed and broken, scattered when only the richest of companies can fuel the tab necessary to progress to the next level…we’re in a brave new world, one in which the majority of us aren’t aware of. AI isn’t just a gimmicky glitchy tech that can summarize your emails and improve your efficiency…it’s coming for much bigger game than that.
There are the idealists and the doomerists. But the tech itself will very soon reach the moment in which it doesn’t matter which side you’re on, it will take on a momentum of its own. When we use this tech are we co-signing this revolution in which much of the workforce will be displaced? Or are we simply buying in to the inevitable to remain relevant in the moment?
Social media made us, by and large, meaner and dumber. AI seems poised to exacerbate that ad infinitum. What happens to a species when it offloads generational cognitive ability to a technology so as to “free” it for “more important things”? How quickly does the brain atrophy? We have seen the attention gap grow exponentially due to tech as base as TikTok…where will ChatGPT leave us when we no longer formulate our own positions and arguments?
An informative read that doesn’t come down one way or the other completely definitively, but one that should inspire your consideration of complicity now. The big, long-term apocalyptic fears/dangers of AI may or may not come to pass. But the short-term implications are well covered here, of racial and gender discrimination, the spread of far-right extremism, and the myriad of other justice issues the tech of AI has already given berth to. Where we go from here is unclear.
When we as readers are treated to a moment when, in the midst of a heated argument between executives and researchers at two of the largest companies in the world today (Apple and Google), in which one calls the other a “speciest” for failing to give proper respect to the future generations of hybrid/synthetic life forms, we realize all of a sudden just how far into sci-fi reality we have and/or are living. Plans to intergrate with AI to enter the online world during the singularity, preserving brains for posthumous preservation and reactivation, companies using the “big fears” of “paperclipping” and human decimation to sell the tech itself (“If it’s that dangerous in the long-term it has to be able to elevate my business now”), ethics panels formed and broken, scattered when only the richest of companies can fuel the tab necessary to progress to the next level…we’re in a brave new world, one in which the majority of us aren’t aware of. AI isn’t just a gimmicky glitchy tech that can summarize your emails and improve your efficiency…it’s coming for much bigger game than that.
There are the idealists and the doomerists. But the tech itself will very soon reach the moment in which it doesn’t matter which side you’re on, it will take on a momentum of its own. When we use this tech are we co-signing this revolution in which much of the workforce will be displaced? Or are we simply buying in to the inevitable to remain relevant in the moment?
Social media made us, by and large, meaner and dumber. AI seems poised to exacerbate that ad infinitum. What happens to a species when it offloads generational cognitive ability to a technology so as to “free” it for “more important things”? How quickly does the brain atrophy? We have seen the attention gap grow exponentially due to tech as base as TikTok…where will ChatGPT leave us when we no longer formulate our own positions and arguments?
An informative read that doesn’t come down one way or the other completely definitively, but one that should inspire your consideration of complicity now. The big, long-term apocalyptic fears/dangers of AI may or may not come to pass. But the short-term implications are well covered here, of racial and gender discrimination, the spread of far-right extremism, and the myriad of other justice issues the tech of AI has already given berth to. Where we go from here is unclear.
September 26, 2024
Real Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called 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.
In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.
Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I urge you to read this book. It does not matter what your politics are, It especially does not matter if you care even a scintilla about technology. This is not a book about the way these...people, I must be polite...are making their dream of an AGI happen, it's about the people doing it, the people giving them the money to do it, and how all of those pieces of a complicated puzzle are failing to do a good job for Humanity. It's important to know what is happening, you are already getting "AI-assisted" stuff advertised to you and no smallest advisory, still less a warning, about what that means.
I strongly urge you to read this book. Before the election if possible, but soon no matter what.
Please.
The Publisher Says: In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called 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.
In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.
Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I urge you to read this book. It does not matter what your politics are, It especially does not matter if you care even a scintilla about technology. This is not a book about the way these...people, I must be polite...are making their dream of an AGI happen, it's about the people doing it, the people giving them the money to do it, and how all of those pieces of a complicated puzzle are failing to do a good job for Humanity. It's important to know what is happening, you are already getting "AI-assisted" stuff advertised to you and no smallest advisory, still less a warning, about what that means.
I strongly urge you to read this book. Before the election if possible, but soon no matter what.
Please.
July 7, 2024
Shout out to Netgalley and St. Martin Press for providing the ARC of the book.
The book gives an amazing and detailed insight about the race between ChatGPT and DeepMind in particular and how AI has evolved. Written in a very easy language that can be understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of computers and AI.
While I enjoyed reading the book and the history of the AI, there were instances where I just felt that the language is pre-dominantly that of a journalist. This becomes evident at a number of instances when author has used the phrase "according to someone working at....". The author, because of probably numerous reasons, couldn't state the name of the sources so this was actually something that I didn't enjoy at all. While reading a book like this, I would want as much details as possible about who is giving the information to the author. This actually at times became irritating where the author was unable to state who the source was except for the phrase "According to someone working closely on ____ project". It also lead to distrust whether the author has actually interviewed or was just throwing sources randomly. While reading the book, I did check online who Parmy Olson was and then got to know she must be credible.
However, towards the end, author has dedicated a section about sources. Probably this section should be there even before the book starts. This will help reader as well to not be wary of the sources.
Another point which I felt could be improved is the timeline. Now this is something that author decides but in this book, I am still a bit confused of the timeline. The author kept on jumping from one year to the other and there are numerous occasions where the author has mentioned "in the same year" where has for quite a while there is no mention of that particular "year". So it got confusing which year was the author talking about.
Overall a really good book to know the how the AI war had started. It can be a good starting point for anyone who would want to know about the AI history. would recommend it for sure.
The book gives an amazing and detailed insight about the race between ChatGPT and DeepMind in particular and how AI has evolved. Written in a very easy language that can be understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of computers and AI.
While I enjoyed reading the book and the history of the AI, there were instances where I just felt that the language is pre-dominantly that of a journalist. This becomes evident at a number of instances when author has used the phrase "according to someone working at....". The author, because of probably numerous reasons, couldn't state the name of the sources so this was actually something that I didn't enjoy at all. While reading a book like this, I would want as much details as possible about who is giving the information to the author. This actually at times became irritating where the author was unable to state who the source was except for the phrase "According to someone working closely on ____ project". It also lead to distrust whether the author has actually interviewed or was just throwing sources randomly. While reading the book, I did check online who Parmy Olson was and then got to know she must be credible.
However, towards the end, author has dedicated a section about sources. Probably this section should be there even before the book starts. This will help reader as well to not be wary of the sources.
Another point which I felt could be improved is the timeline. Now this is something that author decides but in this book, I am still a bit confused of the timeline. The author kept on jumping from one year to the other and there are numerous occasions where the author has mentioned "in the same year" where has for quite a while there is no mention of that particular "year". So it got confusing which year was the author talking about.
Overall a really good book to know the how the AI war had started. It can be a good starting point for anyone who would want to know about the AI history. would recommend it for sure.
October 17, 2024
"Supremacy" dives into the briny deep of the transformative tides of artificial intelligence, with a keen eye on the likes of ChatGPT and its effects on the seven seas of society. The scribe weaves a riveting yarn that not only sails through the technical treasures of AI, but also raises the Jolly Roger on critical questions about the moral compass and social consequences of this swashbuckling technology.
The book's hand is steady and sure, crafting its words in a way that even a lubber can understand. It breaks down the complex rigging of AI and machine learning into bite-sized pieces of eight, making it a delight for both the tech-savvy and the greenhorn.
The tale of ChatGPT is especially intriguing. The scribe looks at how this contraption is reshaping the shipyards of industry, hoisting the sails of productivity, and navigating the choppy waters of communication. Through real-life yarns and studies, the book paints a vivid picture of the treasures and the tempests that come with AI in our daily lives.
"Supremacy" doesn't shy away from the darker side of the coin, either. It grapples with the ethical kraken, such as privacy worries, jobs swallowed by the sea, and the danger of bias in the AI's algorithms. These talks are as timely as a ship's bell, and make ye think hard on the responsibilities we bear with such powerful cannons at our side.
Some might say it skims the surface on the nitty-gritty of AI craftsmanship, but its focus on the broad impacts on society keeps the ship afloat. It's a must-read for any scallywag with a mind to ponder the future of technology and its hold on our lives.
I'd give "Supremacy" a solid 9 out of 10. It's a thought-provoking adventure through the world of AI, fit for any buccaneer curious about the horizon ahead. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or setting sail on the AI seas for the first time, this book has the map to treasures of understanding and will have ye pondering the future like a philosopher on the deck.
The book's hand is steady and sure, crafting its words in a way that even a lubber can understand. It breaks down the complex rigging of AI and machine learning into bite-sized pieces of eight, making it a delight for both the tech-savvy and the greenhorn.
The tale of ChatGPT is especially intriguing. The scribe looks at how this contraption is reshaping the shipyards of industry, hoisting the sails of productivity, and navigating the choppy waters of communication. Through real-life yarns and studies, the book paints a vivid picture of the treasures and the tempests that come with AI in our daily lives.
"Supremacy" doesn't shy away from the darker side of the coin, either. It grapples with the ethical kraken, such as privacy worries, jobs swallowed by the sea, and the danger of bias in the AI's algorithms. These talks are as timely as a ship's bell, and make ye think hard on the responsibilities we bear with such powerful cannons at our side.
Some might say it skims the surface on the nitty-gritty of AI craftsmanship, but its focus on the broad impacts on society keeps the ship afloat. It's a must-read for any scallywag with a mind to ponder the future of technology and its hold on our lives.
I'd give "Supremacy" a solid 9 out of 10. It's a thought-provoking adventure through the world of AI, fit for any buccaneer curious about the horizon ahead. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or setting sail on the AI seas for the first time, this book has the map to treasures of understanding and will have ye pondering the future like a philosopher on the deck.
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