AI For Good: Can artificial intelligence become a force for humanity? | Book Reviews
AI For Good: Can artificial intelligence become a force for humanity? | Book Reviews
Publish Date: 2026-05-17 12:55:00
Source Domain: www.business-standard.com
AI For Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
by Josh Tyrangiel
Published by Simon & Schuster
257 pages
$29
By Max Chafkin
Even for sceptics, it’s getting harder to argue that the obsession with artificial intelligence is pure hype. AI advances are fuelling a historic stock market boom that may bust, but the responses that come from the latest versions of ChatGPT and Claude still often feel like magic. Pretty much everyone in the business world thinks that AI advances will inevitably lead to better products and lower labour costs.
That promise lies in the future, but the reality is that AI is here and changing society. In AI for Good Josh Tyrangiel charts the present-day impact of this technological revolution with case studies in which researchers, educators and entrepreneurs, mostly from outside Silicon Valley, try to do something positive with AI.
The book grew out of a regular column Tyrangiel wrote for The Washington Post in 2023 and 2024, and it is useful at a moment when workers are being asked to adopt Claude, ChatGPT and similar tools. The result is the kind of book designed to be enthusiastically recommended by chief innovation officers and management consultants. For better or worse, your boss will love it.
The first quarter of the book covers the development of Khanmigo, created by OpenAI and the non-profit Khan Academy. The reception is mixed. At one point, after quoting a parade of adults who are awed, by the potential of AI, Tyrangiel meets actual eighth graders who are, he reports, “wildly unimpressed.” One calls the chatbot “not close to the same as an actual teacher.”
This seems troubling, though the number of school districts using Khanmigo is growing quickly anyway. “The marketplace has rendered its own verdict,” Tyrangiel writes.
Next we’re off to the Cleveland Clinic, where a new machine learning system designed…
