Scary Smart

Mo Gawdat

08 December 2022
9781529077650
336 pages

Synopsis

A Sunday Times Business Book of the Year.

Scary Smart will teach you how to navigate the scary and inevitable intrusion of Artificial Intelligence, with an accessible blueprint for creating a harmonious future alongside AI. From Mo Gawdat, the former Chief Business Officer at Google [X] and bestselling author of Solve for Happy.


Technology is putting our humanity at risk to an unprecedented degree. This book is not for engineers who write the code or the policy makers who claim they can regulate it. This is a book for you. Because, believe it or not, you are the only one that can fix it. – Mo Gawdat

Artificial intelligence is smarter than humans. It can process information at lightning speed and remain focused on specific tasks without distraction. AI can see into the future, predict outcomes and even use sensors to see around physical and virtual corners. So why does AI frequently get it so wrong and cause harm?

The answer is us: the human beings who write the code and teach AI to mimic our behaviour. Scary Smart explains how to fix the current trajectory now, to make sure that the AI of the future can preserve our species. This book offers a blueprint, pointing the way to what we can do to safeguard ourselves, those we love, and the planet itself.

'No one ever regrets reading anything Mo Gawdat has written.' – Emma Gannon, author of The Multi-Hyphen Method and host of the podcast Ctrl Alt Delete

Mo Gawdat is my life guru. His writing, his ideas and his generosity in sharing them has changed my life for the better in so many ways. Everything he writes is an enlightening education in how to be human.
Mo is an exquisite writer and speaker with deep expertise of technology . . . This book will teach you how to navigate the scary and inevitable intrusion of AI as well as who really is in control. Us.
A proactive and bold read that provides the shake that humans need to take back our agency over AI, and therefore the fate of the world as we see it.