The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI

Written by:
Andrew Imbrie , Ben Buchanan
Narrated by:
Stephen Bel Davies

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
2
Narrator
1
Release Date
March 2022
Duration
10 hours 50 minutes
Summary
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous-in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire. If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. If we wield it for destruction, it will fan the flames of a new kind of war, one that holds democracy in the balance. As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent-or more fascinating-than how we harness this technology and for what purpose.

The new fire has three sparks: data, algorithms, and computing power. These components fuel viral disinformation campaigns, new hacking tools, and military weapons that once seemed like science fiction. To autocrats, AI offers the prospect of centralized control at home and asymmetric advantages in combat. It is easy to assume that democracies, bound by ethical constraints and disjointed in their approach, will be unable to keep up. But such a dystopia is hardly preordained. Combining an incisive understanding of technology with shrewd geopolitical analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie show how AI can work for democracy. With the right approach, technology need not favor tyranny.
Reviews
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Robert K.

A great book on the state of AI and ML that was mostly interesting. I previously worked for an AI company and I wish I read this while there because it gave me a bigger perspective on the work I saw performed. There were a few topics presented on current events that I felt the authors put their own political views onto without adequate balance but this was a very small minority of the book. Overall it was a great and thought provoking read.

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