This eye-opening narrative journey into the rapidly changing world of artificial intelligence
reveals the dangerous ways AI is exploiting the unconscious habits of our minds—and the real
threat it poses to humanity. The best book I have ever read about AI. -Roger McNamee New York
Times bestselling author of Zucked Artificial intelligence is going to change the world as we
know it. But the real danger isn't some robot that's going to enslave us: It's our own brain.
Our brains are constantly making decisions using shortcuts biases and hidden processes—and
we're using those same techniques to create technology that makes choices for us. In The Loop
award-winning science journalist Jacob Ward reveals how we are poised to build all of our worst
instincts into our AIs creating a narrow loop where each generation has fewer predetermined
and even dangerous choices. Taking us on a world tour of the ongoing real-world experiment of
artificial intelligence The Loop illuminates the dangers of writing dangerous human habits
into our machines. From a biometric surveillance state in India that tracks the movements of
over a billion people to a social media control system in China that punishes deviant
friendships to the risky multiple-choice simplicity of automated military action Ward travels
the world speaking with top experts confronting the perils of their research. Each stop reveals
how the most obvious patterns in our behavior—patterns an algorithm will use to make decisions
about what's best for us—are not the ones we want to perpetuate. Just as politics marketing
and finance have all exploited the weaknesses of our human programming artificial intelligence
is poised to use the patterns of our lives to manipulate us. The Loop is call to look at
ourselves more clearly—our most creative ideas our most destructive impulses the ways we help
and hurt one another-so we can put only the best parts of ourselves into the thinking machines
we create.
