Books on race and criminal justice top bestseller lists

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In 1986, Paul Simon sang of “days of miracle and wonder” in the song The Boy in the Bubble, from his Graceland album. It was hardly a hymn to progress. Scientific ingenuity coexisted with violence and vulnerability. The world was becoming more technologically capable but not necessarily wiser.

Four decades later, I find the sentiment difficult to improve upon. Since ChatGPT’s release in November 2022, predictions about AI have arrived in rapid succession. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and others in the tech industry’s so-called “broligarchy” have fuelled recent headlines about approaching “superintelligence” and futures ranging from human flourishing to catastrophe. The advances are real but the predictions often carry more confidence than evidence. The future, it seems, is permanently scheduled for an upgrade.

Yet a more immediate question risks being lost — as AI systems become more capable and we delegate increasingly complex work to them, will our capacity to understand, question and oversee their outputs keep pace?

That question begins with understanding what we are delegating. AI is not a single technology. Specialized systems have helped scientists predict protein structures. ChatGPT relies on general-purpose language models trained on vast datasets. The most advanced systems are often called “frontier models”. They can write, translate, analyze and converse across subjects, but fluency does not guarantee accuracy. Success at one task does not establish competence at another.

NEW YORK - As nationwide protests against racism and police violence continue, readers are seeking out books old and new on race and criminal justice.

Robin Diangelo's “White Fragility," Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" and Bryan Stevenson's “Just Mercy” were among the works high on the bestseller lists Tuesday of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. Popular books also included James Baldwin's classic “The Fire Next Time,” published more than 50 years ago, and a board book for children from National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi, “Antiracist Baby,” that comes out next week.

The demonstrations began a week ago after a white police officer in Minneapolis put his knee on George Floyd's neck until he stopped breathing and died.

Several of the current bestsellers directly address police violence. Ta-Nehisi Coates' “Between the World and Me,” winner of the National Book Award in 2015, is an open letter to the author's son that centres on the murder of an old friend by police. Angie Thomas' “The Hate U Give” is a popular young adult novel, adapted into a feature film of the same name, about a young girl who sees her best friend killed at the hands of police.

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