This was an unbelievably eye-opening read about the unknown unknowns of AGI and ASI. I highly recommend this book for its powerful insight into the real dangers of artificial intelligence. I thought I had a good understanding of the risks, but this book made clear that no one truly knows what is going happen and the damage could be irreversible.

I recommend this to all readers as our lives will inevitably be affected by The Intelligence Explosion. A wonderfully insightful and urgent warning we should all take extremely seriously.

When I first got this boom I was worried they it would be a defense of AI and talk about how awesome it is and how everyone should use it (not gonna lie I only read the title and not the synopsis go me). It turns out this is all about AI yes, but it is also about how dangerous it can be and how it needs to be examined, understood, and regulated.

The book goes into depth about AI systems, trying to explain everything as best as able in terms that are easy to understand, I say trying because it turns out that most of what goes on inside of AI systems is completely unknowable. The author does a good job of explaining what is able to be explained in my opinion. It is very understandable and readable and I came out of this with a lot more knowledge that in entered into this with.

A lot of this book covers how we have no idea what is going on with AI. Many systems are “black box” meaning we know what the inputs and outputs are but we have no idea what caused those outputs to happen. It also goes into the different ways people are trying to make AI safe for people to use.

This has a very negative/doomsayer approach to AI. If a lot of the people involved with AI can be believed, or at least the people involved mention in this book can be believed, AI is basically going to cause the apocalypse and kill everything. I don’t like AI personally but that seems a little extreme to me?

While the book does a very good job at explaining things, it can go a little far with it at times. The book can be very repetitive as it explains the same concept multiple times in multiple chapters.

Overall despite the bleak doom and gloom vision of the book I really did like it much better than I thought I would. Overall I give this 3.5 stars. Recommend for people looking to know more about AI.