How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms

Received as a Christmas gift. I liked Gigerenzer’s Risk Savvy; he knows his stuff. Since I am very involved in this field, I know I can learn a lot from him and find some reassurance about the fears and FOMO caused by AI.

I have to say the book has some issues. It reads like a collection of pessimistic opinions about the state of AI. He is certainly right that some claims are false or too optimistic, but the book gets lost in a sea of critiques across chapters that are not very connected.

I think the message is to stay critical about AI, because it may not deliver the benefits we expect, and many concepts are muddled by marketing. To me these are obvious, although from the research I see a lot of ignorance around privacy and data management, so it could help a beginner who wants to understand more.

Not a bad book, but I found it hard to follow; it did not grab me. Still, it makes valid points.

Notes

• Self-driving cars and how far we are from Musk’s hype
• Big Data: simple heuristics often perform better and are explainable
• Algorithms can discriminate
• Many people are indifferent to data and privacy, and companies have long used them to serve personalized ads
• It is unclear how effective this strategy is, since it is hard to measure
• Privacy and GDPR are very important; free services profit from our data
• Fake news and deepfakes have made people more susceptible to manipulation, although the magnitude of the problem is still to be determined
• Always look at everything with a critical eye; often AI and algorithms (see Watson) create more problems than they solve
• It does not discuss LLMs, so some points feel outdated