The AI Conundrum: Harnessing the Power of AI for Your Organization – Profitably and Safely, by Caleb Briggs and Rex Briggs. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2024; 264 pages, $32.95.
In late 2022, artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT was unleashed upon the world, and – by number of users – quickly became the fastest-growing internet application in history. Just 2 ½ years later, AI feels like it’s everywhere.
There are competing models built into seemingly every conceivable type of software application. AI-generated content floods social media channels. And it has spawned legal, ethical, and economic debates as well as predictions of both doom (of the apocalyptic sci-fi variety) and boom (of the financial variety for those who leverage it the best).
Further reading:
- What do civil engineers need to know about artificial intelligence?
- Want to sharpen your decision-making skills? Authors offer smart path
- Artificial intelligence detects fires early, protecting people and infrastructure
The AI Conundrum is, fundamentally, meant to be a guide for business leaders to tap into the boom while eliminating – or at least minimizing – “doom-light” outcomes that, while perhaps not civilization ending, could potentially be career ending for those who don’t take proper precautions.
Or as the authors rhetorically phrase it, the AI conundrum is “How can business leaders fully exploit the potential of AI in their businesses when every step toward its full utilization seems to inherently amplify its safety risks? … As a business, how do we use AI profitably and responsibly?”
Importantly, the authors also note that because of the still dizzying pace of advances in AI, The AI Conundrum was purpose-built as a “foundational” explanation of how the technology works and how to assess the risks. By avoiding getting too lost in bleeding-edge analysis and focusing on big-picture questions, their goal is for the book to remain relevant well after the technology has raced much further ahead of where it was at publication time.
Regarding the risks, they, of course, vary significantly based on the application and how a given AI’s inputs and outputs are managed. But they range from obvious issues of physical safety (such as autonomous cars) to flawed decision-making when AI either thinks it recognizes a pattern that does not actually exist or incorporates factually incorrect information into its calculus. Some have said that AI “knows everything and understands nothing,” but the key point is that those implementing AI need to understand its weaknesses and limitations as much as possible.
To that end, the book is neatly divided into two parts: roughly 100 pages dedicated to “The Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence” and then a commensurate number covering “Opportunities, Risks, Countermeasures, and Critical Questions.” This second part is heavily weighted toward case studies touching on a broad range of applications (including sales and marketing, translation, autonomous vehicles, labor, trading, and more) as well as issues like bias in AI.
The authors of The AI Conundrum, Caleb and Rex Briggs, are father and son. Rex is a digital marketing pioneer who was one of the first to do specific research on internet marketing. Holder of multiple patents, he has contributed to building AI businesses and authored or co-authored several previous books. His son Caleb is something of a wunderkind, having started coding at age 10 and working with AI at 14. Currently a math and computer science major at Reed College, he is also a frequent speaker on AI-related topics.
Consistently both thoughtful and pragmatic, the book that the father-son duo has produced is timely and well worth your time – whether you need to contribute to strategic decision-making for your firm regarding the technology or you just want to better understand what’s going on under the AI “hood.”
But be aware: While written well and accessibly and not requiring programmer bona fides to understand, this is not a breezy “executive summary” type of publication geared toward helping you sound smart at parties.
The AI Conundrum doesn’t flaunt its authors’ obvious intelligence, but it doesn’t hide it either – and it expects you to bring your own (native, not artificially enhanced) intelligence with you and fully engage it.
