AI Snake Oil is now available to preorder

We are happy to share that our book AI Snake Oil is now available to preorder across online booksellers. The publication date is September 24, 2024. If you have enjoyed reading our newsletter and would like to support our work, please preorder the book via Amazon, Bookshop, or your favorite bookseller. 

What’s in the book

We get two recurring questions about the book: 

• In an area as fast moving as AI, how long can a book stay relevant? 

• How similar is the book to the newsletter?

The answer to both questions is the same. We know that book publishing moves at a slower timescale than AI. So the book is about the foundational knowledge needed to separate real advances from hype, rather than commentary on breaking developments. In writing every chapter, and every paragraph, we asked ourselves: will this be relevant in five years? This also means that there’s very little overlap between the newsletter and the book. 

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies. 

The book is not just an explainer. Every chapter includes original scholarship. We plan to release exercises and discussion questions for classroom use; courses on the relationship between tech and society might benefit from the book. 

Preordering makes a big difference

This is the first time we’ve written a mass-market book. We learned that preordering a book, as opposed to ordering after release, can make a big difference to its success. Preorder sales are used by retailers to decide which books to stock and promote after release. They help books get recognized on best-seller lists. They allow our publishers to anticipate how many copies need to be printed and how the book should be distributed. They are also used by online booksellers to make algorithmic recommendations.