We've been a fan of Cory Doctorow's work for a very long time - and his new book has 4 days left on Kickstarter:
The Reverse Centaur's Guide To Life After AI:
kickstarter.com/projects/doc…
Bonus quote by music legend Brian Eno! Can't argue with that.
Pasted from the campaign itself, so you can get an idea of what the book is about:
A book for people who are sick of AI bullshit
I wrote this book because I was totally fed up with how much space AI was taking up in the world, in our conversations, in our policy, and in our economy. In a reasonable world, we'd call these AI tools "plug-ins" and we'd use them or not, based on our assessment of whether they make sense for our use. Employers wouldn't be spying on their employees to make sure they were using AI. Schools wouldn't be determined to teach "AI literacy" to our kids. Governments wouldn't be handing over the last drop of potable water and the last Watt of power in our grid to speculative data centers.
Some AI uses are fine. Others are foolish. Some are incredibly destructive. But AI as a technology just isn't that important. Sure, some of this stuff makes for a cool demo, but this is tech, there's a new cool demo every couple years.
What is important is the indiscriminate, uncritical way we're integrating this defective, wildly unprofitable technology into our governments and businesses. We're replacing people who do jobs with AI that does those jobs badly, and then, when those AI companies (inevitably) go bust, we'll have nothing. AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our civilization, and our descendants will be fixing the mess for generations.