The Myth of Artificial Intelligence - The American Prospect

Abstraction: Critical review of Kissinger-Schmidt-Huttenlocher book as Big Tech propaganda

Key points:

• Review by Meredith Whittaker (AI Now) and Lucy Suchman argues "The Age of AI" erases critique to serve Big Tech's political agenda.
• AI advances since 2010 are primarily products of concentrated data and compute held by Amazon, Facebook, and Google—not novel algorithms.
• The book uses three rhetorical strategies: framing Big Tech as national infrastructure, proposing self-serving "solutions," and arguing companies are too important to regulate.
• Schmidt's National Security Commission on AI recommended $40B in federal AI investment using Cold War rhetoric about China.
• Schmidt's Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) is characterized as a self-funded shadow lobbying organization.
• Book ignores AI's racial bias, climate costs, and labor exploitation while celebrating Dutch East India Company without noting its colonial history.

Connections: Eric Schmidt · Google · AI Now Institute · AI Ethics · AI Policy · AI Bias

Source: https://prospect.org/culture/books/myth-of-artificial-intelligence-kissinger-schmidt-huttenlocher/