How to think about AI

How to think about AI A guide for the perplexed

Richard Susskind, 1961-

Book - 2025

"People are confused about what artificial intelligence is, what it can and cannot do, what is yet to come, and whether AI is good or bad for humanity and civilisation -- whether it will provide solutions to mankind's major challenges or become our gravest existential threat. There is also ongoing debate how we should regulate AI and where we should draw moral boundaries on its use. In How to Think About AI, Richard Susskind draws on his experience of working on AI since the early 1980s. For Susskind, balancing the benefits and threats of artificial intelligence -- saving humanity with and from AI -- is the defining challenge of our age. He explores the history of AI and possible scenarios for its future. His views on AI are not a...lways conventional. He positions ChatGPT and generative AI as no more than the latest chapter in the ongoing story of AI and claims we are still at the foothills of developments. He argues that to think responsibly about the impact of AI requires us to look well beyond today's technologies, suggesting that not yet invented technologies will have far greater impact on us in the 2030s than the tools we have today. This leads Susskind to discuss the possibility of conscious machines, remarkable new AI-enabled virtual worlds, and the impact of AI on the evolution of human beings" --

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Subjects
Artificial intelligence > Popular works.
Informational works.
Genres
Informational works
Published
Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press [2025]
Language
English
Main Author
Richard Susskind, 1961- (author)
Physical Description
xvi, 202 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [173]-190) and index.
ISBN
9780198941927
  • Personal Note
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. Understanding AI
  • 1. The Summer of AI
  • 2. On Technology
  • Part 2. Thinking Differently
  • 3. Process-Thinking and Outcome-Thinking
  • 4. Confusions
  • 5. We Don't Have the Words
  • Part 3. Making AI Work
  • 6. Automation, Innovation, Elimination
  • 7. Radical Structural Change
  • Part 4. Confronting the Risks
  • 8. Categories of Risk
  • 9. Harnessing AI
  • Part 5. Contemplating the Future
  • 10. Conscious Machines?
  • 11. Coming Soon
  • 12. The Great Schism
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Top Thirty AI Books
  • Acknowledgements
  • Publisher Acknowledgements
  • Index
Review by Library Journal Review

Susskind (Online Courts and the Future of Justice), a legal scholar with almost 40 years of experience with artificial intelligence, offers readers a basic history of the theories, technology, and science behind AI, considers possible future developments, and ponders their effects on society and even human evolution. The questions he raises and the determined focus he brings to them feel almost overwhelming at times, yet he makes a powerful case for staying alert and curious and not simply surrendering to a digital overlord. With clarity and precision, Susskind gives readers the basic knowledge and vocabulary needed to weigh AI's benefits against its possible harms. Because of his legal background, the book often turns to regulatory questions instead of grappling with the prophetic import of the term "artificial" in AI. VERDICT The classic dystopian fear of AI and VR somehow replacing human society, supplanting human autonomy, or stifling human independence lurks just beneath Susskind's unflappable tone, but this is not a book of woe; it is a book of "what if?". Addressing benefits and possible harms, Susskind focuses on the questions readers need to ask to think more clearly and more humanly about AI.--Herman Sutter

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