More critically, it has to do with reining in the triumphalist creators who may be developing increasingly 'autonomous' AI technologies under the auspices of the misguided definition of intelligence that Russell himself champions. The real control problem isn’t managing the coming of transcendent superintelligent creatures. Human Compatible is a much more interesting book than the few others I’ve read in the last few years, and I think it’s good for people curious about artificial intelligence. Russell’s book does, however, sound an important alarm bell, although it is not quite the one he intended. Russell covers similar ground with respect to the problem of control over a superintelligence but in a style that I think most interested readers will find easier to follow and more insightful. Russell ultimately falls prey to the techno-solutionist idea that intelligence can be treated as an ‘engineering problem’, rather than a constraining dimension of the human condition that demands continuous, critical self-reflection. Although it was published several years after Bostrom’s Superintelligence, I recommend reading Human Compatible first. merely rehearses more than 60 years of unanswered criticisms, intractable shortcomings and repeated failures. Sacrificing the coherence of his own definition, he hedges his bets. Still, Russell all but admits that instrumental aptitude is not enough to account for the full gamut of intelligence capability. His definition of AI reduces this quality to instrumental rationality. I just finished Stuart Russells marvelous book on AI safety, Human Compatible, and I cant recommend it highly enough. What he presents instead is a dizzyingly inconsistent account of 'intelligence' that will leave careful readers scratching their heads. Russell, however, fails to convince that we will ever see the arrival of a 'second intelligent species'. These are already helping people to tackle challenges such as climate change, the biodiversity drain, disease detection and disaster relief. It might seem surprising, in a solid, cautionary account of contemporary misuses and abuses of AI, that Russell fails to do justice to current boots-on-the-ground benefits. At the book’s heart, Russell incisively discusses the misuses of AI. What is certain is that Human Compatible marks a major stride in AI studies, not least in its emphasis on ethics.

Human compatible book review