I enjoy books in this genre immensely, and this was no exception. I greatly enjoyed this book and ended up purchasing a copy for my personal library.
Following the journey that is AI, has left me impressed, skeptical and sometimes concerned for the future. I remain neutral and often times against AI used for larger purposes, but it's interesting to see the science and the behind the scenes.
There was enough technology speak to keep me intrigued but no so much that it felt like an information dump.

I'll be keeping an eye out for more titles like this one.

Great book, shows a plethora of topics on AI, would highly recommend, Can't wait for more books from this author.

I would like too thank Net Galley and the author for letting me read this publication.

When I started this book I thought it was going to be a technical walk through developments in AI and where it is headed. It did indeed start describing some of the technical aspects of the field, especially in respects to the challenges faced by its developers. However, the second half of the book evolved into an exploration of the societal, economic, political, and military impacts of AI, with a focus on the different approaches being followed by various countries and political groups. A focus was placed on the importance of societies being careful about how AI will be used in their midst and its potential impact on privacy and liberty.

The basic concepts presented are definitely important and need to be considered. I think I was looking for more of a technical overview. However, it's important to focus on the author's purpose for the book as described in the introduction: setting a common baseline understanding of the topic. And for that purpose, I believe the book succeeds and I rate it accordingly.

Kanaan paints an incredibly cogent and broad picture of AI, grounding his point of view in succinct history relative to his overarching narrative and point of view.

If you’re looking to understand the ‘so what?’ of artificial intelligence with just enough technical, historical and geopolitical depth to appreciate the technology and its impact, this is the perfect book.

If you’re looking for a technical deep dive on AI, Kanaan will whet your appetite but ultimately leave you dissatisfied.

If you’re looking for intrigue, espionage and geopolitical drama, Kanaan instead takes a much more neutral and dry observational approach (which I personally prefer and appreciate) and the book is certainly not as riveting as the intro leads on.

Ultimately this work does an excellent job of simply and directly illustrating the power and potential of AI and leaves me feeling more broadly educated on the subject and more aware of the vast geopolitical influence and impact of AI.

Unless you're an expert in AI, you're bound to learn something from this interesting book. Since it is foregone conclusion, this is probably an important read, so that readers will have a good basis for understanding AI before it further encroaches on our lives. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

I really enjoyed reading this book, and I was quite pleasantly surprised that I did, because non-fiction is a genre that I rarely like.

The narrator was able to explain many complex or complicated ideas in a simple way that was easy to understand and very informative, I liked the way that the book first goes through important concepts and jumps right into the intricate history of AI - how it has affected the world and continues to do so, and how various countries in the world today are racing to wield this power.

The beginning of this book was a bit broad and unspecified, and it took a while for it to actually get into the stream of artificial intelligence itself. However, I liked the way that the book was written that someone who knew absolutely nothing about the subject could easily understand what was being said and get a better sense of some of the advances happening in the world today, which are spoken of quite frequently in the news as well.

Overall, this book proved to be a somewhat thought-provoking and highly interesting read. I would definitely recommend it to others who either like non-fiction, or if you are like me and enjoy reading about science in the future and artificial intelligence in general.

This is a review of a book supplied by Netgalley.

T-Minus AI is a broad survey of computation, artificial intelligence and machine learning. It is written by Michael Kanaan, who, according to his Amazon author's page, was the first chairperson of artificial intelligence (AI) for the USAF, and has authored and guided the research, development, and implementation strategies for AI technology and machine learning activities across its global operations. Since leaving the AF, he has become an advocate for the development of AI technologies and the need for the US to play a leading role in this field.

Artificial intelligence is the attempt to use computers to mimic, reproduce, and ultimately surpass human intelligence. Ever since the earliest digital computers were shown to be capable of performing useful computations, people have asked whether those devices were capable of thought and consciousness. Given the centrality of these questions to human identity, and the potential impact of reproducing human thought capacity with manufacturable elements, the topic of artificial intelligence has gone through multiple hype cycles of great promise and large amounts of funding, followed by "AI winter" cycles of disillusionment. The most recent cycle has centered around "machine learning" (ML) methods where "neural network" programs can be trained to reproduce complex data patterns that can help computers process natural language and navigate complicated situations. Google's translation functions, for example, use machine learning trained to the large amount of translated documents already on the internet to suggest translations for additional text. The current cycle of AI and ML development is distinguished by providing for the first time a commercial advantage. This makes current work immune to future AI winters, although even the most ardent advocates for the technology will admit that the current incarnation falls short of HAL, the heuristically programmed algorithmic computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There have been a number of good books released over the last decade. For example, Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" is an advocacy book; it describes the how AI technology is going to transform human life, without going into much depth of any of the particular details. Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence" is a philosophical deep dive into the issues that arise from a this technology. There are also a vast number of technical books about the programming tools and libraries required to actually use AI technologies. All of these books are well targetted at a particular audience that they serve well.

The early chapters of "T-Minus AI" suggest that the author doesn't know what audience he wants to target. An example of this can be seen in Chapter 5, "Using the Languages of Men and Machines", which discusses human/natural languages, programming languages, decimal and binary numerical encodings, and ASCII text encodings, but does not discuss AI or ML topics. A casual reader who wants to understand the promise of AI technology probably doesn't need to understand, for example, the difference between high level and low level programming languages, and an advanced technical reader already is familiar with this information. The author could be laying the groundwork for a future discussion, but this material occurs in Chapter 5, well into the book, and such introductory material is best kept in the introduction.

However, once the book gets to discussing AI, the level of description is more appropriate, and the story flows much more naturally. The book ends with a decent survey of different companies' national AI development programs, followed by an interesting discussion of the GPT-2 natural language processor.

In summary, the book is a decent overview of the impact of recent AI technologies to the modern world, but one that could have been much more substantial with some careful editing and focusing.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. It appears frequently in magazines, TV, radio, Internet, etc. But it is not clear what is AI and what is not, what can we expect from it, what risks and threats represents this technology, … This book from Michael Kanaan will give all of us a personal, business and social point of view of Artificial Intelligence in the close and medium range future.

If you need to understand more clearly on what is the difference between artificial intelligence and machine learning and robots, this is the book. A very lucid and non-controversial take on the state of AI today and where it will be going in the near future.

Michael takes the reader in a very well thought out journey - from the beginning of time, the big bang and the evolution of humans. He clarifies the aspect of consciousness and why that would be different and difficult for the machines and makes it a huge departure from us humans. The different types of machine learning and AI are detailed well through the evolution of computing and the need for data as the base for the AI/ML. He, thankfully, predicts that the superintelligence kind of AI would not be in the timeline that we can perceive - so all the threats of matrix and terminator kind of movies will not be a reality. This is not a blank statement from him, but very well argued through the basics of what it means to achieve that level.

The book then closes in with the geo-political equations of becoming an AI superpower and leaves us with the knowledge of how AI can be a tool which can be used and abused. He reveals aspects of Chinese and Russian use of AI for not very ethical purposes. Hopefully this serves as a warning to all of us. The book closes with a show of the AI plans of major countries around the world .

I took away a lot from the book - from increased knowledge about the evolution of intelligence, AI and ML and
While being very important for human progress how these are tools which can easily be used for nefarious work. We already saw some of the AI/ML work from some of the governments (like China) in the handling of the COVID . I hope all countries awaken to this and come up with clear policies for the right use of such potential!

The author does a great job putting AI into context, from the past through the present and into the future. It is definitely written at a laypersons level, so no complex technical descriptions or formulas. Overall, I enjoyed this book, but as a technical person interested in the area of AI, nothing was too surprising, I did appreciate, however, the review of how many different countries are approaching their AI frameworks.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 stars.

AI is one of the next greatest scientific frontiers, and competition between global superpowers to be at the leading edge is fierce. Michael Kanaan does a terrific job of outlining both technological prowess and cultural considerations that naturally arise when different nations have different cultural norms and expectations. From the pervasive surveillance of the social credit system in China to the control and domination of women through Absher in Saudi Arabia, Kanaan highlights how AI is being used today throughout the globe in ways that, while often seen to have legitimate benefit by their own citizens, may shock the conscience of citizens of other parts of the world.

One of the best features of this exposition is how incredibly approachable it is for someone new to the subject. Stepping back to explain not only how artificial intelligence is defined and how it's evolved, but also taking the time to explain the fundamentals of the technology itself and the fundamentals of the political conditions of countries whose policies may seem extreme to some. At the same time, these explanations sometimes come off as rabbit holes Kanaan has much more patience than the reader to explore. Similarly, readers who come in with a basic understanding of the material may find themselves skimming entire chapters, or even sections of chapters. For those interested in future implications, most of that really comes in the last couple of chapters and is touched on only briefly in comparison to the rest of the material. This book is best suited as a primer for those with a budding interest, but little familiarity with the subject.

In summary, very approachable, easy read, and an excellent, balanced, and thought-provoking introduction to the current state of affairs on perhaps the most important technological frontier of this generation.

Great appreciation to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

This book was widely informative. Its something I would pick up and read again to make notes in. However, I felt I may have not been the target audience due to the fact I have an extensive background in computer science and cognitive science. Kanaan goes through the history of AI and its future and really breaks it down well for someone new to the field or someone who is merely curious about AI and its future. I have done my degree in this area so many of the concepts talked about I had relatively known and found myself skimming or skipping a few parts of the book. Nonetheless its a very informative book.

Just like the space race in the 1950s, there is now intense geopolitical competition and rivalry between countries attempting to be the first to truly harness the power of AI. With the vast circumstances AI can be used in it is a powerful weapon to have in your arsenal, especially if you have discovered how it can improve prospects, national security and how it can be utilised militarily. Wielded as a weapon AI has the potential to become deadly and with China, Russia and The United States already playing a game of cat and mouse using AI against each other the possibility of it taking over many aspects of life in the near future is not so far-fetched. Michael Kanaan is an authority in the field of artificial intelligence and writes in easily comprehensible and accessible prose with no waffle. What makes this book particularly special is the fact that anyone could pick it up and understand it; Kanaan makes an often complex topic seem simple.

In T-Minus AI Kanaan explains the history of AI and how it has evolved over the last few decades, the benefits of utilising AI in everyday life and the negative connotations of it, in great detail. The implications of it evolving so much that it creates problems for mankind is a concern many people have, including scientists in the field right through to laypeople. It is structured in a readable manner and begins by describing the development of AI, the different types of it and exactly how global superpowers have used it to their benefit so far. This is a captivating and well-researched book which presents the history, present and future of AI in an eminently engaging fashion and explains the social, economic and political implications as well as the interplay between them. This is a must-read for anyone interested in what our outlook may be in the not too distant future. Many thanks to BenBella for an ARC.

One of the best books I've read on AI as it didn't get bogged down in super technical details, but helped the reader really understand the process of how AI generally works, the history of it, & the geopolitical race to secure the AI future.

The books goes into how the human mind works & how AI is generally similar on how it trains and learns info. The narrative throughout the book was very engaging & kept wanting to read on. I would recommend this to anyone interested in AI or the future, whether you're just starting out learning about AI or already know about it, there is definitely info in here for you.

Continuing my trend of reading science nonfiction, I snagged a copy of T-Minus AI in order to learn a bit more about the real-world realities of emerging artificial intelligence technologies as opposed to their fictional counterparts. While I had a vague idea of how AI had progressed over the past few decades, I wanted to gain a more in-depth understanding about how AI actually works and the current near-future implications of AI deployment in everyday life.

This books starts out by exploring the history of AI, focusing intently on the crucial steps taken throughout the twentieth century to develop AI into something that could have everyday applications. Then it summarizes the different types of AI and the various impacts that each one could have on individuals and governments—and the interplay between those two parties. The book then takes the time to explain how each of the various world superpowers has approached AI in the recent past and how they intend to approach it in the near future, as well as how those approaches have and will continue to effect global political relations and the socioeconomic welfare of those countries’ citizens.

Overall, I thought that T-Minus AI presented a thorough and well-organized look into the history, present, and likely future of AI technologies and convincingly impressed upon the reader the importance of being cognizant of how AI is and will come to be used in daily life. That said, I did have a few quibbles with the book, the biggest one being that I thought it occasionally went off on somewhat unnecessary tangents—the most obvious example being a lengthy history of the development of democracy that I don’t believe the average reads needs to understand the context of that chapter’s topic.

Anyway, this is a pretty good book if you have an interest in learning about the broad strokes of AI—historically, technically, and politically—and it does a good job of explaining all the issues (and solutions) that may arise as AI use becomes more and more common across the globe.

Rating: 3.5/5