Surprisingly, he argues that we're not in an AI arms race yet because no government is spending unusually high amounts on the technology; it's a bit counterintuitive, but worth thinking through. Why I finished it: This book dragged for me… and I’m not sure if it was subject or my circumstances. None of this is to exaggerate the hand that open-source AI is dealing to tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Open AI. It also keeps me humble as to how much there is on the topic of artificial intelligence to understand, a sentiment shared by even the most expert voices in this field of technology.

Scharre does an interesting job reviewing the current state of AI, particularly in the military and political realms. Scharre worries that that combination will leave China's military ahead of the US military at adopting AI. It detailed face scanning technology the Uyghur detention and "reeducation" campaigns, along with the social credit score and even gait detection on how you walk.AI is reaching into every part of our lives, but one of its most widespread applications is largely unseen to ordinary American citizens. Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" is an exceptional read that explores the intricacies of technology allocation as a political action. Four Battlegrounds takes readers inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future. So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.

But Scharre hedges so much on AI’s future that his stated possibilities for the technology begin to rub uncomfortably against his own thesis: that states have agency in how they deal with AI’s four key components. The book hedges on exactly which forms AI will take as technology continues to develop and proliferate.The text is also very critical of AI used for authoritarian purposes, very much the case in China currently. He also went into great detail about how China uses tactics like in 1984 - controlling the past and the future.

He has already covered some of this ground in his significant 2018 book, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. The main idea in the book, represented by the title, explores the four areas Scharre describes where A. Four Battlegrounds is a must-read guide to how the emerging artificial intelligence arms race will shape the geopolitical, economic and political struggle between China and its authoritarian allies and the democratic West led by the United States and Europe.While short on technical detail, the book is rich in strategic policy thinking and was written in a clear, if sometimes dry, style. Lastly, hopefully this was an issue limited to the DoD Library’s copy of the audiobook on Libby, but it was one 13-hour track!