SUPREMACY
by Parmy Olson
Olson is a tech journalist who writes for publications like the Wall Street Journal. The book is about the race to AGI and the rivalry between Sam Altman at OpenAI and Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman at Deep Mind.
If you’re not familiar with the terminology, Artificial General Intelligence is AI that can transfer learning from one domain to another. This would make it able to match or even outperform people on a huge range of tasks, potentially become autonomous and even pose an existential threat. There is difference of opinion about when/if AGI will be achieved, with some experts believing it’s coming in the next few years, whilst others think it’s a long, long way off or even impossible. If it is achieved, it will unquestionably bring staggering changes to almost all human life.
Supremacy details how the main players in the race for AGI started with idealistic intentions about its potential to benefit humanity and solve world problems. But rivalry and the need for vast computational resources slowly ground this down, ultimately leading to corporate takeover by Google and Microsoft. Despite attempts by Altman, Hassabis and especially Suleyman to maintain ethical oversight, the potential vast riches has led to a steady move towards focussing on profit and power is now concentrated in the hands of a very few.