Brian Christian – The Alignment Problem

The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values

Author: Brian Christian
Publishing Company: W. W. Norton & Company
Price: $14.16 (kindle), $20.00 (paperback), $24.25 (hardcover)
ISBN: (paperback) 978-0393868333, (hardcover) 978-0393635829
Published: October 5, 2021

In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they―and we―succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story. The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture―and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.