Description
Balance
AI’s beneficial outcomes are a possibility that we need to work hard for; some of its risks are already a certainty that we have to manage and mitigate. BetweenBrains offers an unbiased, truth-seeking, multi-disciplinary lens that guides the reader through the depths of AI and its transversal impact.
Building Trust
Our low-trust societies are being put to an unprecedented stress test by the proliferation and weaponization of AI. The rules of the AI age necessitates new collaborative structures of trust to be built by and between AI leaders and citizens. BetweenBrains outlines a pragmatic vision of a human-centric and trustworthy AI paradigm.
Augmented Intelligence
The key dilemma of our age is what kind of AI do we need, what purpose should it serve, and, ultimately, who is in charge. BetweenBrains argues that the solution should be less “Artificial”, but “Augmented Intelligence”, with a purpose that taps into the best of machine intelligence, inseparable from human wisdom.
Dr Czina Krisztina
Review for BetweenBrains
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Karvalics Laszlo (verified owner)
In the tsunami of AI-related new books my first decision gate is always a disqualification of the nightmarish-dystopian bullshit, based on empty and misleading artificial superintelligence (ASI) considerations.
The second selection step is the identification of the basic approach of the author(s) to the nature of AI itself. I only prefer the general point of views, based on substantial hybridity of man-machine systems – to be able to solve human problems, as a legacy, instead of choking because the slump scraps of optimist-pessimist binarism.
Now, Between Brains is a survivor, shining on my virtual bookshelf. And after reading it from cover to cover, the quest is about its specific added value to the discourse and/or the originality of the outcomes.
This book is fencing on this last traverse. Its conclusion is not to define perfect and visionary solutions for future AI-stewardship, but to build a planetary epistemic community, creating an ecosystem of ideas (with their words: collective mindspace) to find the best (ethical) frameworks, channeling and orienting the future development. I deeply agree with the authors, that we have got to have a civilizational vision at first, and we can find the role of AI within it, fertilized by our design thinking and imaginative bravery through sense-making. This is the only chance to transform the contemporary AI dominance games (detailed in a single chapter) into joint system-improving efforts. The quintessential Manifesto proposes an atypical institution, as a platform for concerted cross-disciplinary research, curation, education and dissemination activity. Its globally synchronized Foundry network could serve as a birth system of new solutions, providing alternative sustainability models, collaboration tools with dedicated support of implementation professionals.
The idea is an ambitious split from the closed scientific, technology and business narratives, while opening a new, participative agora for the public, urging the creation a vital, interoperable language instead of brain-fagged technobabble, where collective co-creation is a basic norm.
Minds first, shaping the AI-future thereafter. Good luck to this hopeful Renaissance, my dear allied forces.
Laszlo Z. Karvalics (PhD) information historian and information society researcher, research fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, Kőszeg (IASK).
Zsolt Nemeth
Review for BetweenBrains
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Daniel Nagy
A quote from the preview:
“Moreover, AI is the core of exponential transformation: soon all technology will be AI-powered.” and “The primary question of our age is: who gets to shape AI?”
This. You should read this book to get the right answers.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple (even Tesla) are all moving ahead to improve their AI software. It’s still in developing stages but has impacted our lives hugely.
Read this book. It’s worth every penny.
Dr Gabor Matrai
Review for BetweenBrains
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Attila Szigeti
Review for BetweenBrains
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Peter Kovacs
Review for BetweenBrains
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Eva Rez
Working with startups I was quite excited to read this book – BetweenBrains: Taking Back Our AI Future – as soon as it came out of the ‘online press’. I truly believe that AI enabled technologies are an important pillar of our future, but I agree with the authors that the less ‘artificial’, or the way I put it, the more natural it will be, the more harmonious life next generations can expect. We are always afraid of unknown, and ‘black box’ is everything but transparent to a human eye, but we should trust the potential that is inherently embedded in the magical algorithms. Or we shouldn’t?
This book to me has been a great guidance on this very basic hypothesis. To me, its aim is not to discuss all the technicalities of artificial intelligence or to give an exhaustive list of applications, but to raise some very important questions. It is a well-known fact that in everyday business, planning tends to be neglected before the actual execution. In case of such a gamechanger enabler of many verticals including education, health care or transportation, this mistake should not be made. Especially, that all the fundamentals of AI – evolution of neural networks, computing power capabilities and the availability of Big Data – came together to make a promising (r)evolution to happen.
BetweenBrains is here to fill in this ‘planning gap’, and to walk not only industry experts and scientists through this essential thought process, but us, members of our society. Have you ever thought about the unconscious bias trap that we probably all fall into sometimes? And about how to avoid planting that into human made algorithms when creating the human alike Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)? Do you believe that AI can actually be empathic? Or creative? And how about the barriers to entry into the AI development race, where the future might be shaped by the few already in the game? Are you afraid of losing your job to smart machines or the opposite, it thrills you to find out how your own capabilities can be augmented by them? Will AI be the new nuclear power that will also be weaponised? How will we obtain AI literacy?
As controversial as those questions might sound, they are the foundation of that planning process. As an ‘AI-optimist’, I still have my trust in AI that according to my beliefs will enable a human centric future. Still, I am thankful for the authors to offer this framework for this crucial planning exercise. To find out your own AI vision, let the book take you through this journey, which will be as much thought provoking as entertaining!
Harry Red (verified owner)
You’ll be gripped by the historical and wide-ranging approach to AI in Between Brains. For instance, Hatamleh and Tilesch very succinctly describe the three core reasons why AI (by neural nets) emerged as a transformative technology in recent years:
1. The availability of Big Data and the associated ecosystem for collecting, storing and processing it.
2. The trend towards ever-faster GPUs for videogame applications, leading to massive parallel processing of data — a key need for modern AI techniques (not many know this!).
3. The evolution of the fundamentals of neural nets.
Just understanding how these three recent trends in digital technology led to modern AI puts you ahead of most newcomers to the field. And this detail occurs very early in the book.
Give it a go. The authors are clearly experts in their field on AI — one of the most important technological frontiers of our time.
philip horvath
BetweenBrains is a thoughtful exploration of the opportunities and challenges of AI. A great read especially for any non-technical reader who needs to understand the implications of the coming wave of “AI everywhere”, the impact on business models, political systems, and ultimately on our planetary society as a whole. Particular focus is on the human aspects of the issue, and the ethical implications of our choices – or lack thereof – when it comes to AI. It ends with a passionate appeal to create a new system of AI governance that transcends not just single actors but also national boundaries – the kind of systems we need to tackle humanity’s “wicked problems” of the century to come.
Gergely Falus
I was very interested when I got this book in my hand: I was curious about what can be told about AI that has not been told already. Well…a lot. It is a deeply philosophical book about the topic, mainly focusing on the social aspect of both the now and the future AI. But not in the classic dull style… It is very readable with specks of humor.
It is hard to write about something without a spoiler. Maybe everybody sees its substance differently. To me, it is the possibilities of our future, whether AI becomes an Angel and brings us Paradise – or it will be our Devil and brings Hell onto Earth. The authors will not give us a definite answer – they entrust the reader with this final conclusion, but they do this with a lot of ammunition, facts and logical thought experiments.
What I particularly liked in the book is the bold parts where the authors are thinking about the future of centralized religions, especially Roman Catholic Church in the light of AI. As for the recommendations at the end of the book, I am skeptical about them because of what I think of human nature, but I admit they would be really helpful if they were realized. It is actually a very useful book from well-prepared authors – I enjoyed reading it.
Ákos Maróy
A thoughtful and exciting exploration on the evolution and future of AI, put in both technological, social and geopolitical context. If anyone was unsure about how important the emergence of this technological field is – this book will make it clear that the changes to our social fabric will be profound already in the near future.
The book reflects current realities and power dynamics, with a glimpse of the future. Looking forward to a follow-up publication that dares to go further and entertain more provocative future scenarios.
Katalin Feher (verified owner)
The book is a journey from the ancient times to our future, and also, from our expectations to reality. The authors essentially emphasise how important to understand the changing augmented business and operating models behind the technology. Likewise, argumentation of the penetrated ecosystems and social fabrics are noticeable in the context of AI or ANI. Many thanks for the practical examples and cases, I would have read even more of this in detail. Besides that, not only the bright side of AI is discussed, but errors, biases, and ethical issues are also in the spotlight. This approach supports a balanced discussion for a “hyper perspective” (p144). In summary, the book “Between Brains” calls the audience who read about AI comprehensively for the very first time, and also, readers with deep knowledge to be rewarded with a wide perspective and reasoning.
Rami Zebian
Review for BetweenBrains
★ ★ ★ ★ ★