Books AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference  by Arvind Narayanan (Author), Sayash Kapoor (Author)

"AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference" by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor is a critical and accessible book that cuts through the hype surrounding artificial intelligence. The authors explain the crucial distinctions between different types of AI and uncover widespread misleading claims about AI's capabilities. While acknowledging some genuine advances like ChatGPT, the book reveals the serious harms caused by faulty AI, especially in fields like education, medicine, hiring, and criminal justice.

The book warns that many AI products are "snake oil"—promises of AI that do not and cannot deliver as advertised. It highlights why organizations fall for these misleading technologies and explains why AI cannot fix problems like social media manipulation or become an existential risk in the near term. Narayanan and Kapoor emphasize that human misuse of AI is a greater danger than AI itself, and they caution against the concentration of AI power in largely unaccountable big tech companies.