Tools and Weapons Released in South Africa and UAE

Tools and Weapons Book

Since the dawn of time, any tool can be used for good or ill. Even a broom can be used to sweep the floor or hit someone over the head. The more powerful the tool, the greater the benefit or damage it can cause. While digital transformation holds great promise, the world has turned technology into both powerful tools and formidable weapons.

Available today in South Africa and UAE, Microsoft President Brad Smith’s new book Tools and Weapons provides an inside view on the biggest technology trends and thorniest issues of our time, including privacy, cybercrime, the conundrums of AI and the impact of social media on democracy.

Written in narrative non-fiction form, the book uses stories from today and from history to understand and contextualise the latest societal inflection point. Drawing on work from people across Microsoft as well as outside the company, the book identifies the real challenges we face when technology is used as a weapon, and offers a clear and ultimately optimistic prescription for how the world can move forward on a number of these challenges.

 

In Tools and Weapons, Brad outlines the new approaches needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future, and governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the fast pace of innovation.

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Brad Smith
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Brad Smith

These issues are bigger than any single person, company, industry, or even technology itself. They involve fundamental values of democratic freedoms and human rights. Technology innovation is not going to slow down. The work to manage it needs to speed up.

In the UAE, the book is published by Hachette Book Group. In South Africa, readers can order their copy from Exclusive Books in October. Additional global availability will follow in the coming months. Visit the website https://news.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/tools-and-weapons/ to learn more.

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