Audiobooks by Parmy Olson

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World

In November 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive—until now. In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind. Supremacy sharply alerts Listners to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Parmy Olson (Author), Lisa Flanagan (Narrator)

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Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race that Could Break the World

It took Facebook four years to reach 100 million users. ChatGPT, released in November 2022, did it in two months. The simple text box was unlike anything experienced before. It could craft poems, write screenplays and letters of condolence, and tell jokes. It told one writer that it was in love with him and another that it had spied on Microsoft's programmers through their webcams. But this is just the beginning. Things are going to get much, much worse, as Google and Microsoft compete to monetize this rapidly evolving technology. The danger isn't that humanity is going to be eliminated as in Terminator or The Matrix; no, the danger is that these untested, rapidly evolving technologies will undermine our way of life more insidiously, sucking value out of our economy, replacing high-level creative jobs and enabling a new, terrifying era of disinformation. It was never meant to be this way. The founders of the two companies behind the most advanced AIs in existence - San Francisco-based OpenAI and London-based DeepMind - started their journeys determined to solve humanity's greatest problems. But they couldn't develop their technologies without huge amounts of money and that much money comes with obligations - the kind that Google and Microsoft plan to make back a hundred-fold. Supremacy is the astonishing, untold, behind-the-scenes story of the battle between these two AI companies, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the dangerous direction that they're now going in. It's a story of manipulation, exploitation, secrecy and perhaps the greatest invention in technological history - but, above all, it's a story of ruthless, relentless human progress, and how it will impact all of us for years to come.

Parmy Olson (Author), Lisa Flanagan, TBD (Narrator)

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We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

A thrilling, exclusive expose of the hacker collectives Anonymous and LulzSec. WE ARE ANONYMOUS is the first full account of how a loosely assembled group of hackers scattered across the globe formed a new kind of insurgency, seized headlines, and tortured the feds-and the ultimate betrayal that would eventually bring them down. Parmy Olson goes behind the headlines and into the world of Anonymous and LulzSec with unprecedented access, drawing upon hundreds of conversations with the hackers themselves, including exclusive interviews with all six core members of LulzSec. In late 2010, thousands of hacktivists joined a mass digital assault on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their treatment of WikiLeaks. Other targets were wide ranging-the websites of corporations from Sony Entertainment and Fox to the Vatican and the Church of Scientology were hacked, defaced, and embarrassed-and the message was that no one was safe. Thousands of user accounts from pornography websites were released, exposing government employees and military personnel. Although some attacks were perpetrated by masses of users who were rallied on the message boards of 4Chan, many others were masterminded by a small, tight-knit group of hackers who formed a splinter group of Anonymous called LulzSec. The legend of Anonymous and LulzSec grew in the wake of each ambitious hack. But how were they penetrating intricate corporate security systems? Were they anarchists or activists? Teams or lone wolves? A cabal of skilled hackers or a disorganized bunch of kids? WE ARE ANONYMOUS delves deep into the internet's underbelly to tell the incredible full story of the global cyber insurgency movement, and its implications for the future of computer security.

Parmy Olson (Author), Abby Craden (Narrator)

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