Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Our Final Invention by James Barrat - Available

Our Final Invention

Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

by James Barrat
ebook
81 of 81 copies available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
81 of 81 copies available
Elon Musk named Our Final Invention one of five books everyone should read about the future—a Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013.
Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the "smart" in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence.
In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI's Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine.
Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?
"If you read just one book that makes you confront scary high-tech realities that we'll soon have no choice but to address, make it this one." —The Washington Post
"Science fiction has long explored the implications of humanlike machines (think of Asimov's I, Robot), but Barrat's thoughtful treatment adds a dose of reality." —Science News
"A dark new book . . . lays out a strong case for why we should be at least a little worried." —The New Yorker

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 4, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781250032263

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781250032263
      • File size: 1412 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      September 15, 2013
      Cars aren't out to kill us, but that may be a side effect of building cars, writes documentary filmmaker Barrat in this oddly disturbing warning that progress in computers might spell our extinction. Computers already perform essential tasks in our national infrastructure and daily lives, including several beyond the capacity of the smartest individual--e.g., playing chess or competing against humans on Jeopardy. While dazzling, these accomplishments are too specialized for the artificial intelligence the author and the many philosophers, scientists and entrepreneurs he interviews have in mind. Within decades, computers will operate at the speed of a human brain and become rational, allowing them to learn, rewrite their own programs to learn better, solve problems better, make decisions and perhaps create more computers like themselves. Having reached this level, they have achieved artificial general intelligence. Inevitably, working on their own without human input, they will exceed human intelligence by factors of 100 and eventually thousands, achieving artificial superintelligence. Many experts assert that the first ASI machine that humans invent will be our last invention due to the fact that it will leave man's brainpower in the dust. Whether or not designers build friendliness or empathy into these machines (no one is doing that now), no ASI computer is likely to defer to our interests any more than humans deferred to, say, mice, bison or even indigenous tribes as they spread across the world. As researchers on climate change know, warnings of future disasters are a hard sell. Enthusiasts dominate observers of progress in artificial intelligence; the minority who disagree are alarmed, articulate and perhaps growing in numbers, and Barrat delivers a thoughtful account of their worries.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      April 1, 2015

      The same broad territory--discussion of various aspects of the Singularity--is covered here as by Nick Bostrom (below) but from the perspective of a documentary filmmaker, rather than a philosopher and academic. Barrat has interviewed key thinkers in the field, including Ray Kurzweil and Arthur C. Clarke, and summarizes his interpretation of their concerns very accessibly.

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading