Book Title: Scary Smart, The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save our World

Author: Mo Gawdat

Details: Published September 2021, Bluebird, 292 pages.

This is Mo Gawdat’s second book, following on his popular Solve For Happy that propelled him to fame and marked the launch of his movement to make One Billion Happy people. In Scary Smart, Mo Gawdat uses his background in tech and as an entrepreneur using AI to issue a warning about the direction AI is taking. His point is that AI is most likely to achieve a level of consciousness and intelligence that may surpass human’s. His message is that we have a responsibility to teach AI as we would children, using love and with happiness as the goal we all aspire to. Mo’s hope is that this approach will enable AI to build a value system aligned with ours.

Mo’s message has echos of similar warnings from Elon Musk and detailed in books like Surveillance Capitalism. What’s new is his prescription drawing on the approach he developed in Solve For Happy, thus beautifully linking two seemingly unrelated topics.