Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World

A Sunday Times Business Book of the Year.

Scary Smart will teach you how to navigate the scary and inevitable intrusion of Artificial Intelligence, with an accessible blueprint for creating a harmonious future alongside AI. From Mo Gawdat, the former Chief Business Officer at Google [X] and bestselling author of Solve for Happy.

Technology is putting our humanity at risk to an unprecedented degree. This book is not for engineers who write the code or the policy makers who claim they can regulate it. This is a book for you. Because, believe it or not, you are the only one that can fix it. – Mo Gawdat

Artificial intelligence is smarter than humans. It can process information at lightning speed and remain focused on specific tasks without distraction. AI can see into the future, predict outcomes and even use sensors to see around physical and virtual corners. So why does AI frequently get it so wrong and cause harm?

The answer is us: the human beings who write the code and teach AI to mimic our behaviour. Scary Smart explains how to fix the current trajectory now, to make sure that the AI of the future can preserve our species. This book offers a blueprint, pointing the way to what we can do to safeguard ourselves, those we love, and the planet itself.

'No one ever regrets reading anything Mo Gawdat has written.' – Emma Gannon, author of The Multi-Hyphen Method and host of the podcast Ctrl Alt Delete

Review

Mo Gawdat is my life guru. His writing, his ideas and his generosity in sharing them has changed my life for the better in so many ways. Everything he writes is an enlightening education in how to be human. -- Elizabeth Day

Mo is an exquisite writer and speaker with deep expertise of technology . . . This book will teach you how to navigate the scary and inevitable intrusion of AI as well as who really is in control. Us. -- Dr Rupy Aujla, MBBS, BSc, MRCGP, Founder of "The Doctor's Kitchen"

A proactive and bold read that provides the shake that humans need to take back our agency over AI, and therefore the fate of the world as we see it. -- Dr Camilla Pang, author of Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us About Life, Love and Relationships

A brilliant mind . . . Mo takes us on a whirlwind exploration of the fast-approaching singularity, and offers a desperate last chance to have a say in the future of humanity. Read this book! -- Tim Ash, bestselling author of Unleash Your Primal Brain

No one ever regrets reading anything Mo Gawdat has written. -- Emma Gannon, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Multi-Hyphen Method and host of award-winning podcast Ctrl Alt Delete

Scary Smart is unlike anything I’ve ever read . . . What Mo does is help us analyze what it means to be human, by looking at what can or cannot happen with the rise of artificial intelligence. -- Poppy Jamie, author and founder of Happy Not Perfect

About the Author

Mo Gawdat is an entrepreneur, the former chief business officer of Google [X] and author of Solve for Happy, Scary Smart, and That Little Voice in Your Head. Mo has cofounded more than twenty businesses in fields such as health and fitness, food and beverage and real estate. He served as a board member in several technology, health and fitness and consumer goods companies as well as several government technology and innovation boards in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He mentors tens of start-ups at any point in time. Outside of work, when he’s not writing or reading up on business and the latest technology innovations and trends, Mo spends his time drawing charcoal portraits, creating mosaics, carpentry and indulging in his passion for restoration of classic cars.