Book review, Who's Afraid of AI? by Thomas Ramge


Who's Afraid of AI?: Fear and Promise in the Age of Thinking Machines (New York: The Experiment, 2018)
by Thomas Ramge

Reviewed by Myna German
Imagine a day when two machines conduct surgery by talking to each other. The machines conduct the entire operation by robotic arms, artificial intelligence, sans doctors. It’s called the Internet of things, communicating machines that imitate human consciousness and collaborate in doing things together. Good luck.

Thomas Ramge, the author of this book, gives us a glimpse of that life.  Can AI make humans obsolete? That is the focus of this book. Without taking an ideological stance, the author sub rosa contemplates this issue.
The book talks about a machine like Alexa or Echo studying ski conditions in Switzerland and arranging 3-day tours, including airlines. Sounds less stressful? Right. It could even locate the right skiing companions. But would you want a machine to do this for you?
The author concludes it may be helpful as long as it doesn’t go too far.

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