The On The Bookshelf Podcast

Jeremy Kahn on "Mastering AI"-It's a tool

 A Fortune magazine journalist draws on his expertise and extensive contacts among the companies and scientists at the forefront of artificial intelligence to offer dramatic predictions of AI's impact over the next decade, from reshaping our economy and the way we work, learn, and create to unknitting our social fabric, jeopardizing our democracy, and fundamentally altering the way we think.

 Within the next five years, Jeremy Kahn predicts, AI will disrupt almost every industry and enterprise, with vastly increased efficiency and productivity. It will restructure the workforce, making AI copilots a must for every knowledge worker. It will revamp education, meaning children around the world can have personal, portable tutors. It will revolutionize health care, making individualized, targeted pharmaceuticals more affordable. It will compel us to reimagine how we make art, compose music, and write and publish books. The potential of generative AI to extend our skills, talents, and creativity as humans is undeniably exciting and promising.

 But while this new technology has a bright future, it also casts a dark and fearful shadow. AI will provoke pervasive, disruptive, potentially devastating knock-on effects. Leveraging his unrivaled access to the leaders, scientists, futurists, and others who are making AI a reality, Kahn argues that if not carefully designed and vigilantly regulated AI will deepen income inequality, depressing wages while imposing winner-take-all markets across much of the economy. AI risks undermining democracy, as truth is overtaken by misinformation, racial bias, and harmful stereotypes. Continuing a process begun by the internet, AI will rewire our brains, likely inhibiting our ability to think critically, to remember, and even to get along with one another-unless we all take decisive action to prevent this from happening.

 MASTERING AI delivers much-needed guidance for anyone eager to understand the AI boom-and what comes next.

 Jeremy Kahn is an award-winning journalist for Fortune magazine, where he covers artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. In addition to cover stories and features, he writes Fortune's weekly Eye on AI newsletter and cochairs its Brainstorm AI technology conferences. Previously, he wrote about technology, including AI, for Bloomberg. His writing on a range of subjects has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Republic and Slate. He has reported from India and much of South Asia, the Ivory Coast, Iraq, Venezuela, and most countries in Western Europe. He is a former managing editor of The New Republic. An Ohio native, he now lives with his family in Oxford, England.

 

How the world ran out of everything-Protocol 7-Mastering AI

This episode of ON THE BOOKSHELF includes three recent shorter individual episodes (thanks, Premier Networks!):
Peter Goodman's new book "How the World ran Out of Everything" (the supply chain crisis during and after COVID)

Matthew Marsden and the new movie "Protocol 7" , a true chilling story of Big Pharma and vaccination development

Jeremy Kahn and his new book "Mastering AI: A Survival Guide to our Superpowered Future"

 

Jennifer Strickland Urges Women to Reclaim Their Femininity Before It's Too Late

 

Jennifer Strickland, author of I Am a Woman: Taking Back Our Name. It’s time for women to reclaim what makes them uniquely female and affirm God’s breathtaking design for womanhood.“Wake up!” cries Jennifer Strickland in this bracing call to women. With womanhood itself under a withering cultural attack, this is no time for Christians to stand teary-eyed on the sidelines. Men are invading women’s sports and even bathrooms, while schools indoctrinate children in lies about gender fluidity. The assault of insanity on reality took normal women by surprise, but we can’t waste another minute in fighting back.Our culture needs an answer to transgenderism, pornography, sexual violence, and the lies that are crippling our young women and robbing them of their dignity We cannot abdicate our responsibility to the next generation. It is up to women who fear God to restore the true meaning of our name. Women have had enough. And now it’s time to rise up as emboldened warriors to declare the truth against the gender-bending culture’s lies. Jennifer Strickland, a podcaster, author, and former model, is calling women to use their influence to expose the lies of gender ideology and point children and teens back to God’s beautiful design for male and female. In I Am a Woman, Strickland calls Christians to uphold the dignity of womanhood with clarity and compassion. She urges readers to cherish the power imbedded in the name “Woman”—because women are not undefinable. The name “Woman” means guardian, rescuer, advocate, protector, and life-bearer. Women must reclaim their name and reject any agenda that diminishes the dignity of sex and gender for future generations—before it’s too late. BIO: Jennifer Strickland, author of I Am a Woman: Taking Back Our Name, is the founder of U R More and the host of the I Am a Woman podcast. She is a sought-after speaker, a former model, and the author of several books, including Girl Perfect, More Beautiful Than You Know, Beautiful Lies, and 21 Myths (Even Good) Girls Believe about Sex. Strickland holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and a master’s degree in writing and literature. She lives with her husband and three children in Texas.

 

Brian Boone & Uncle John's Bathroom Reader is back with #37

 

The "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" series in the longest-running, most popular series of its kind in the world with more than 16 million copies in print.  The new, 37^th annual edition is Uncle John’s Action Packed Bathroom Reader. There are almost as many adventures in the life of Brian “Uncle John” Boone as there are fun facts in the average Bathroom Reader volume, the series to which he has been a contributor for more than two decades. Picking up a lot of fascinating knowledge and stories about the world around him from an early age, he continued to absorb interesting information and learned how to share it in amusing ways. He’s published books of jokes, music, sports, and literature, and funny stuff Funny or Die, Vulture, Mad, The New Yorker, The Onion, and Someecards. He wrote a couple of stage musicals and a wacky sci-fi novel, developed major podcasts and radio shows, and showed off his Uncle John cred as a contestant on Jeopardy!With more than 16 million books in print since 1988, Uncle John is back with the annual collection of action-packed articles from the Bathroom Readers’ Institute.

Uncle John’s Action-Packed Bathroom Reader will take longtime fans and new readers alike on a whirlwind world tour with stories that explore the realms of pop culture, history, sports, and science—plus new exploits of dumb crooks that will make you wonder “What were they thinking?” For this 37th annual edition, Uncle John and his team at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute have explored lands near and far to bring you this collection of entertaining and informative articles that include short reads for a quick trip to the throne room as well as longer page-turners for extended visits. Also included are plenty of amusing lists, factoids, quotes, and quizzes that will fill your head with all sorts of odd trivia that you can use to amaze your friends.

There are almost as many adventures both personal and professional in the life of Brian “Uncle John” Boone as there are fun facts in the average Bathroom Reader volume, the series to which he has been a contributor for more than two decades. Brian picked up a lot of fascinating knowledge and stories about the world around him from an early age, with a childhood spent reading voraciously, traveling, and watching lots of TV. He continued to absorb and retain interesting information when he learned how to share it in amusing ways as he studied journalism and went on to publish books of jokes, music, sports, and literature, as well as hilarious stuff for the likes of Funny or Die, Vulture, Mad, The New Yorker, The Onion, and Someecards. He even wrote a couple of stage musicals and a wacky sci-fi novel, developed major podcasts and radio shows, and showed off his Uncle John cred as a contestant on Jeopardy! He’s authored thousands of articles in the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series and edited offshoot titles including Fake Facts, Germophobia, Robotica, and Beer-Vana.

 

How can Christians best be good citizens? Dr. Miranda Cruz brings "Faithful Politics"

“Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters” by Miranda Zapor Cruz (IVP Academic)

How can Christians be involved in political activity without losing sight of their witness and their moral core? Can Christians participate in political parties? Should we? And if so, how can we do so and maintain objectivity?

Christians are dual citizens, of our temporary home on Earth, and our permanent home in Heaven. We are called by Christ to the “the salt of the earth”, which means we are be involved in humanity and human endeavors. Americans have a unique situation in that we choose our leaders. Are they also elected by God? As the author states, “The United States is not, has never been, and will not become the Kingdom of God. Therefore, no single political party or ideology is entirely compatible with Christian convictions.”

The author offers six chapters investigating the history, theology, and influence of ten different types of Christian engagement in politics. There is one thing the author especially wanted to emphasize: 21^stcentury United States of America should not be confused with ancient Israel. OT passages referring to the People who are called my Yahweh’s Name means the Chosen People, Israel. It does not transfer to modern America. Earthly kingdoms and nations are temporal, even the best ones; only God’s Kingdom is eternal.

But in the meantime, how do we serve God through our nation in the best way? Dr. Zapor introduces several viable options. First, the Separatist models, which includes “isolationist separatism” and “prophetic separatism”, rooted in the Anabaptist tradition, and are found in the Amish, Mennonite traditions. We also have “evangelical separatism”, from the Puritan movement. Next, the Separationist option, either the historic Baptist approach, of the Martin Luther “Two Kingdoms” (delineating separate spheres of influence for church and government.) “The Social Gospel” is the 6^th approach, while the 7^thand 8^th are Calvinist options.

She warns about the last two options, which she argues are “incompatible with Christian faithfulness. Dominionism is a theological movement claiming Christians should gain power in every sphere of society to bring about God’s kingdom on Earth, while Christian nationalism is a “political movement that uses Christian language and symbols, fundamentally at odds with Christian orthodoxy.”

How do we serve Christ faithfully within the structure of a political system never addressed in Scripture?