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Book Details Title: First Light of Day: A cautionary tale of our future written by one of today’s leading experts on technology innovation. Author: Michael J T Steep Number of pages: Publisher: Silicon Valley Press (January 30, 2020) Language: English ISBN: 1733959106 Rating: 4,8     8 reviews

Book Description From the Back Cover What is the price of our society’s obsession with artificial intelligence? Michael Steep’s First Light of Day paints a picture of the not-too- distant future, illuminating the dangers of a world of our own creation, but not of our own design. In so doing, Steep’s lucid and heartful narrative makes an impassioned case for each of us to remember our humanity, especially in the digital age. –General Stanley McChrystal, partner, McChrystal GroupWith First Light of Day, Mike Steep has accomplished something extraordinary. Not only has he written an incredible description– chilling as it is–of the world ruled by machine intelligence that is just around the corner, but he has done so by inventing a new kind of book for this new era. It is a hybrid of a novel and a nonfiction book, each part furthering the vision of the other. It is as revolutionary as the future it explains. –Michael S. Malone, author, columnist, editor, investor, businessman, and television producer An expansive trip into our future and the technology to take us there. Michael Steep has created a new genre of technological realism that gives the reader a heady combination of science fiction and scientific fact. –Tom Wheeler, former chairman, Federal Communications Commission; author, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future Mike Steep gives a gripping look at how artificial intelligence and digital technologies will fundamentally change the future for every individual and organization. In his fictional narrative, he provides a fascinating look at life in the near future based on his treasure trove of experience of more than three decades at the world’s most admired technology companies. –Michael Morell, former deputy director, CIA Using his Silicon Valley real-world experience, Michael Steep has created a novel exploring big ethical dilemmas as AI surpasses human capabilities. AI is either humanity’s saving or its demise. First Light of Day, including its bonus explanation of key-ingredient technologies, gives the reader a front-row seat to a possible future where nationalism, politics, and our essence as humans confront rapid change in technology. –Gary Shapiro, president and CEO, Consumer Technology Association Michael Steep has written an engaging and insightful novel that explores how multiple personal AI assistants like Siri and Alexa, which many of us already use today, are inexorably advancing in their capabilities to the point where they can ultimately develop “personalities” and “self-awareness.” Steep has developed a wide-ranging set of insights about digital and other emerging technologies through a long career in commercializing solutions for tech companies like HP, Apple, Microsoft, and Xerox PARC, and as the executive director of Stanford’s Disruptive Technologies and Digital Cities research program. The book masterfully weaves these insights about the trajectory of these disruptive technologies into a plausible and frightening story that shows how these intelligent assistants coevolving and interacting in unexpected ways can create a dark and dystopian future of severe economic inequality, cybercrime, and conflict. The book is an important and page-turning read for anyone working on, using, and/or concerned about the advances of intrusive Big Data collection and the artificial intelligence applications that feed ravenously on it. –Raymond Levitt, operating partner, Blackhorn Ventures, LLC; Kumagai Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, Stanford University Is it science fiction, or our future? Steep has opened up the integrated experiences, business models, and societal impact that disruptive technology portends. As a country, we have big choices to make, and First Light of Day tells a captivating story highlighting the powerful changes already underway. As a former leader at Amazon, I remember that, when the company started 25 years ago, how ridiculously traditional business leaders underestimated the impact of Amazon and digital technologies. Now, looking forward 10 to 20 years, what sounds the impossible will become the everyday. Enjoy the story and don’t ignore its lessons! —John Rossman, managing partner, Rossman Partners; author, Think Like Amazon: 501⁄2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader I’ve known Mike Steep since he hired my company 20 years ago to do PR for his startup Mira Technologies. We’re both card-carrying disrupters, having lived through numerous paradigm shifts driven by Silicon Valley. Challenging people to think is in his bones. Few would attempt what he’s created with First Light of Day–it propels us forward 35 years to experience a totally plausible and very challenging future built on the actual technologies we are deploying today. He dares us to look at what we have all been a part of creating and to think about what the future will be like. This book educates as well as entertains, with a Part Two that explains the technologies that underpin the fictional Part One. —Andy Cunningham, former PR executive for Steve Jobs, Apple Computer; orchestrated the launch of the Apple Macintosh in 1984; founder and CEO, Cunningham Collective I have known Mike Steep since his time at Apple. He has consistently looked into the future and identified those technologies that would go on to impact everyday life. In this fast-paced mystery, Steep has crafted an intriguing story about how technology will forever change the way we live.–Don Strickland, president and CEO, Strickland Associates; adjunct professor, Imperial College London Michael Steep’s First Light of Day provides our team a priceless look into not just the future, but the ramp from the present to the future. Diamond Wealth is a boutique financial-services firm and a member of Stanford’s disruptive technology program. Our business depends on information and insights. This book helps us understand how disruptive technologies can and likely will impact society. —Ronald S. Diamond, chairman and CEO, Diamond Wealth Strategies, Family Office  Read more About the Author Michael Steep has been at the forefront of technology for the last 30 years. He is the founder and director of Stanford University’s Disruptive Technology & Digital Cities Program, and a frequent speaker on leading innovation. His expertise on disruption and innovation comes from the field including Xerox PARC where he was senior vice president, and earlier in executive and management positions at leading tech giants including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Apple. He lives with his wife in Silicon Valley. Read more Customers Review: Very entertaining and informative. Michael Steep’s First Light of Day is an insightful and thought-provoking hybrid book transporting the reader between fiction and an actual transformative technological journey. It is nothing short of a wild ride into a potentially frightening future that will make you question and profoundly debate the perceived benefits and hidden implications of such technology advances. The author managed to clearly articulate and project the accelerated changes of our current Information Age into a not so distant future. Great fiction is supposed to transport the reader. Like a super scary amusement park thrill ride – you climb aboard this strange creation and find yourself challenged to let the thrills rush in and sweep you along. You keep telling yourself, “It’s only a story, it’s only a fictional story.” You know you’ll survive the thrills, you know it’s really only 2020, right? Right?? Then you read the tech primer after the “story”, and, hmmm, let me think about all this. First Light of Day is kind of like that ad where the guy opens up the note that says “Your heart attack arrives tomorrow.” Makes you think about what’s coming, that’s for certain. It challenged a lot of what I thought I knew about technology and society. I LOVED it. “First Light of Day” is a highly enjoyable and important read. Michael Steep, a Microsoft, Xerox PARC, et al veteran, understands technology and is adept at explaining its significance in a readable fashion.The book takes place in 2045, a time when high value workers are (almost exclusively) programmers, AI is omnipresent, and quantum computing is on the precipice of becoming a reality. The moral, political and ethical issues the book addresses are weighty and deserve our attention TODAY. When I read the last sentence of the book, I was sorry it was over, and I can’t give higher praise than that.I recommend this book to anyone concerned about technology and its impact on society today and tomorrow. Most books on AI tend to be either overly technical or overly simplistic. However, I found this book to have the right balance of each, exploring the possible future of AI with projections on the technology, but without excessive techno-babble.The hybrid between fiction and non-fiction is also a really nice touch as it makes the abstract more tangible with a story line that could be a Hollywood techno/political thriller. The author paints a realistic scenario of the potential promise and perils of a technology that we most certainly won’t be able to control. The international political drama and subsequent fallout are also probably right on target.I found the book to be thought-provoking and it encouraged me to think more deeply about many aspects of the coming A.I. and technology revolution.It’s also clear that the author has been in Silicon Valley many years and has worked hands-on in the trenches, so this isn’t an academic paper written in an ivory tower — you can tell it comes from first-hand high-tech experience.Highly recommend it, great read! Check it out! I have read that in order for a book to be a great bit of reading it must: take you on a journey, elicit an emotional response and of course draw the reader in, among other things. First Light of Day does that and more because all along you are left realizing that this is not pure fiction. This is future tech and the reality is we all have a choice to make about what we want our world to look like by the year 2045! While this is listed as Dystopian the outcome from the collective choices we make are going to be the a difference. There is hope. FIRST LIGHT OF DAY is a terrific novel that brilliantly tells the story about the impact technology will have on our lives going forward. Extraordinarily well written! This book dramatizes the moral and philosophical conflicts that continue to arise as technology “exceeds anyone’s ability to manage or even anticipate the consequences.” The second part is a description of the technologies that are causing these conflicts.The writing is clear and concise, and the story and characters in part one are believable. What makes their conflict unique is not their physical actions; the conflicts are philosophical and moral. The story’s excitement is generated by the protagonist who must decide—and race to take action—before other characters do so.As importantly, in the second non-fiction part of the book, the author demonstrates his expertise as a futurist on how technology innovation, the benefits and dangers of specific technological applications, and his message (realized by the protagonist in part one), is: “creating sentient beings using machine intelligence,” will have “more impact than any other event in human history.” There are forces that will “divert the sentient machine to their own ends,” and “human connection is the only true path to happiness.” This book is another wake-up call for industry, government and thought leaders about being careful what we ask for as we create this brave, new world. Michael Steep delivers a grounded and fascinating vision into the near future, but the reader had best be willing to tough out a bit of setup.This is a relatively unique take on cyberpunk (if it can really be called that), in that the technology is a meticulously researched extrapolation of real-life scientific developments. First Light explores freedom, privacy, and the meaning of our humanity in the context of A.I. development. It still packs a solid philosophical and emotional punch.The book’s epilogue (or second part) goes into detail about the technology shown in the novel itself, which is handy for learning more, but I see it more as optional extra reading.Overall, it’s worth a read for anyone interested in the philosophical questions about technology we will need to ask ourselves sooner rather than later.