What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference
If you’ve ever wondered whether that flashy AI-powered product is truly genius or just a digital placebo, AI Snake Oil is your must-have decoder ring. Written by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, two of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, this book is the clear-eyed, hype-busting, BS-detecting guide we didn’t know we desperately needed.
AI is everywhere these days: hiring, banking, policing, grading your essays, diagnosing diseases… even writing poems. But while some of it actually works (hello, ChatGPT), much of what’s sold as AI is, frankly, snake oil: stuff that doesn’t deliver on its promises and may never do so, no matter how much machine learning you sprinkle on it.
Narayanan and Kapoor dig deep into how AI systems really work, revealing:
- Why “AI-powered” often just means “fancy spreadsheet with buzzwords”
- How bad algorithms are quietly distorting high-stakes decisions in education, health, and justice
- Why even sophisticated AI has serious limitations and struggles with fairness, reliability, and common sense
- When AI can actually help, and when it’s just a high-tech distraction from real solutions
- Why the biggest danger isn’t rogue robots; it’s people wielding AI irresponsibly or manipulatively
Crucially, AI Snake Oil isn’t anti-AI. It’s anti-bogus-AI. The authors make a strong case for responsible development, better oversight, and a more informed public. They challenge tech companies, media outlets, and policymakers to cut the nonsense and start building systems that are actually useful, ethical, and grounded in reality.
Whether you’re a policymaker, tech enthusiast, investor, or just trying to figure out if your boss’s “AI transformation strategy” is a scam with a slide deck, this book gives you the tools to spot the real innovation and steer clear of the synthetic sizzle.
TL;DR: AI Snake Oil is your intellectual vaccine against artificial nonsense.