AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference

Recommended by Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard

On a recent webinar sponsored by the Pulitzer Center, Karen Hao of The Atlantic, possibly the world’s leading journalist of AI, was asked what books she would recommend for a more in-depth understanding of artificial intelligence. Hao’s response: AI Snake Oil, the newsletter that led to this insightful new book of the same name, by Princeton scholars Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor. As the authors argue, AI companies are now “pivoting from creating gods to building products”: surely a good thing, but also worth questioning how such a pivot became necessary.