Book Review: "The Conceptual and Technical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Its Evolution: From Computational Models to Machine Learning"

Ghazza Abderrazzak, al-Usus al-Mafāhīmiyya wa-l-Tiqaniyya lil-Dhakāʾ al-Iṣṭināʿī wa-Taṭawwuruh: Min Namādhij al-Ḥawsabiyya ilā al-Taʿallum al-Ālī [The Conceptual and Technical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Its Evolution: From Computational Models to Machine Learning] (Doha/Beirut: ACRPS, 2024), pp. 448.

From The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man to The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (co-authored with Bruce R. Powers), Marshall McLuhan’s work has inspired numerous theories seeking to make sense of the information age. Technological discoveries have repeatedly reshaped humanity’s cultural and behavioural characteristics. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 1440s reveals the significant role books played in shaping the concept of the individual and fostering nation-building. As a medium of communication, books helped create the conditions for leaving the “Gutenberg Galaxy” and entering that of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph system and radio. Whereas print enhanced visual perception and made it the primary sense for communication, “digital media” emerged, as McLuhan foresaw, by engaging multiple senses at once and enabling communication on the scale of the “global village”. With the advent of the internet, the defining features of a digital society began to take shape, along with virtual spaces in which digital and human activities intersect.

With the emergence of AI, communication, interaction, and connection have evolved beyond simple exchange toward the creation of machines, robots, and software capable of independent decision- making and idea generation. This has led to “new breakthroughs previously unknown to humankind”, as Ghazza Abderrazzak, emphasizes in The Conceptual and Technical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and its Evolution: From Computational Models to Machine Learning. These breakthroughs concern new aspects of the relationship between humans and machines, which now extends far beyond mere use, encompassing data collection, accurate disease diagnosis, language learning, new professions, the decline of others, content creation, e-commerce, and even psychological counselling. It also gives rise to troubling challenges such as cybercrime, privacy violations, plagiarism, cyber violence, internet addiction, and exacerbated unemployment, as intelligent machines perform physical and cognitive tasks far beyond human capabilities. Moreover, AI risks widening inequality, threatening privacy, and distorting digital justice.

​* This study was published in the 21​th issue of AlMuntaqa, a peer-reviewed academic journal for the social sciences and humanities. You can read the full paper h​ere ​​.​​