THE TRUTH ABOUT AI AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

Veteran AI researcher and statistician, Steve Shwartz, is bringing his unique perspectives to a mainstream audience. In his upcoming book, Evil Robots, Killer Computers, and Other Myths: The Truth About AI and the Future of Humanity (Fast Company Press, February 9, 2021), Shwartz explains how AI works in simple terms, why people shouldn’t worry about intelligent robots taking over the world, and the steps we need to take as a society to minimize the negative impacts of AI and maximize its positive influence.

With a fascinating Foreword by AI pioneer Roger Schank, Evil Robots explains how each of the major types of AI work, why none of today’s AI systems have human-level intelligence, and why none of us will encounter intelligent robots in our lifetimes. It is oriented towards a mainstream audience and contains very high-level explanations.

Schank says “Steve has a sane perspective on what computers can and cannot do. In Evil Robots, Steve carefully goes over all the hype in what passes for AI these days and explains how it works—and why it doesn’t really work all that well.”

In addition to the physical edition of Evil Robots, Shwartz’s AI Perspectives.com also offers a free online textbook, How AI Works, that provides an in-depth explanation of how AI works without any advanced math. The online book contains hyperlinks to original research articles throughout, which readers can use as an index to the research literature to find even more in-depth information. This online book is intended for anyone who desires a deeper, more technical dive into the technical topics discussed in the print book.

Shwartz answers the questions:

• When will self-driving technology dominate our roads
• Why a current self-driving vehicle bill before Congress could lead to numerous deaths and traffic jams
• Why AI will NOT take over all our jobs
• How to understand the ‘mind’ of a chatbot
• How VCs and Angel Investors should evaluate AI tech
• How IBM beat the Jeopardy champions without understanding English
• Why AI weapons are not as scary as they sound
• Why we shouldn’t trust machine learning systems for critical decisions
• How AI enables governments to know everything we do
• How the terminology used by AI researchers raises the hype level about AI
• Why we don’t have to worry about AI-based fake news
• Whose self-driving car technology will win:  Google or Tesla
• Machine learning and conventional programming in self-driving cars
• What investors look for in AI startups

STEVE SHWARTZ is a successful serial software entrepreneur and investor. He uses his unique perspective as an early AI researcher and statistician to both explain how AI works in simple terms, why people shouldn’t worry about intelligent robots taking over the world, and the steps we need to take as a society to minimize the negative impacts of AI and maximize its positive influence.

He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Cognitive Science, where he began his AI research, and also taught Statistics at Towson State University. After receiving his PhD in 1979, AI luminary Roger Schank invited Shwartz to join the Yale University faculty as a postdoctoral researcher in Computer Science. In 1981, Roger asked Steve to help him start one of the first AI companies, Cognitive Systems, which progressed to a public offering in 1986. His third AI company, Esperant, became one of the leading business intelligence products of the 1990’s, and he has had several other entrepreneurial successes.  Learn more about Steve Shwartz at www.AIPerspectives.com and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

His new book, Evil Robots, Killer Computers, and Other Myths: The Truth About AI and the Future of Humanity, will be available on Amazon and other major booksellers in February 2021.