Artificial Intelligence: Rise of the Lightspeed Learners

Self-learning machines called AIs are popping up all around us. They're real, and really important. They're affecting our lives-as workers, consumers, investors, citizens, patients and students. AIs bring huge promise, but also existential risk. The biggest risk isn't killer robots-it's the renegade leaders, despots, and unrestrained hackers everywhere we should worry about. Charles Jennings' insightful new book, Artificial Intelligence: The Rise of the Lightspeed Learners presents sides of AI most people have never even considered before. That surprises are a main product of AIs. That AI cybersecurity is much more critical than traditional IT security. That, as Vladimir Putin put it, "the country that leads in AI will control the world." Jennings blends insights into Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and Beijing with insider AI stories, irreverent humor and strong opinions. He explores the global AI ecosystem from Cambridge to Beijing; and provides a stark assessment of AI activity in China-where he lived for two years working with senior government officials. He claims that the U.S. and China are in an AI horserace that will be the most important technology contest ever, with the outcome still very much in doubt. Consisting of stories, musings, interviews, and more, it provides a timely and accessible explanation of AI and its key issues to the general reading public.

Charles Jennings is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and speaker who has been starting and running growth organizations for over 40 years. He was founder or CEO of three successful Internet companies launched in the 1990s. Jennings has written several books on technology, including the seminal work, The Hundredth Window: Protecting Your Privacy and Security In the Age of the Internet (2000), which was translated into five languages. Jennings has been a regular newspaper columnist (for the Seattle Times, and others); from 2014-2017, Jennings served as CEO of NeuralEye—an AI company set up to transfer technology from Caltech/JPL to the commercial market. Jennings is an experienced and entertaining public speaker whose credits range from his TEDx talk, “From Armadillos to Monkeys,” to a keynote at the UN 50th Anniversary Conference on the Declaration of Human Rights in Toulouse, France. Jennings is still an active keynoter on AI at conferences around the world. Jennings has long been a thought leader in Internet trust and security. He was a delegate to the Nobel Technology Summit in Oslo, and named by Federal Computing Week as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Government technology. He’s a recipient of the prestigious lifetime achievement award of the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, and was also the subject of a major feature story in Wired magazine (December 2005 issue).