Social Machines

Will your next doctor be a human being—or a machine? Will you have a choice? If you do, what should you know before making it?

This book introduces the technically-engaged reader to the convergence of two technologies: artificial intelligence in its modern incarnation and the growing trend of social
networking to "reach off the Web" into the real world. Both these technologies are important in their own right, but as they converge we are approaching an historic
inflection point in the partnership between human beings and machines with profound impacts on the future not only of computing but of our world.

In this book, AI expert and researcher James Hendler explores the social implications of artificial intelligence systems in the context of a close examination of the technologies
that make them possible. The author evaluates the utopian and dystopian prognostications of the social implications of the convergence of AI and social networking. Social Machines: The Coming
Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity is your field guide to the future of your personal relationships with the machines that are already changing your life and to the future of your machine-mediated relationships with other human beings and humanoid constructs.