Talking to Robots
A Brief Guide to Our Human-Robot Futures
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
'If you want to see what that future might look like, Duncan's book is a fun place to start'
NPR
'Intensely readable, downright terrifying, and surprisingly uplifting'
Vanity Fair
'5 books not to miss . . . A fascinating work of imaginative futurology'
USA Today
One of Time magazine's '32 Books You Need to Read This Summer' - 'a riveting read'
One of David Baldacci and Elizabeth Acevedo's best summer reads, on USA Today's Today programme
'A refreshing variation on the will-intelligent-robots-bring-Armageddon genre . . . this colourful mixture of expert futurology and quirky speculation does not disappoint'
Kirkus Reviews
What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate about our human-robot future? For even as robots and AI intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology - it's also about what robots tell us about being human.
From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that swiped my job' bots, bestselling American popular science writer David Ewing Duncan's Talking to Robots is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined.
Featured bots include robot drivers; doc bots; politician bots; warrior bots; sex bots; synthetic
bio bots; dystopic bots that are hopefully just bad dreams; and ultimately, God Bot (as
described by physicist Brian Greene).
These scenarios are informed by discussions with well-known thinkers, engineers, scientists, artists, philosophers and others, who share with us their ideas, hopes and fears about robots. David spoke with, among others, Kevin Kelly, David Baldacci, Brian Greene, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Stephanie Mehta, David Eagleman, George Poste, George Church, General R. H. Latiff, Robert Seigel, Emily Morse, David Sinclair, Ken Goldberg, Sunny Bates, Adam Gazzaley, Tim O'Reilly, Tiffany Shlain, Eric Topol and Juan Enriquez.
These discussions, along with some reporting on bot-tech, bot-history and real-time societal and
ethical issues with robots, are the launch pads for unfurling possible bot futures that are informed by how people and societies have handled new technologies in the past.
The book describes how robots work, but its primary focus is on what our fixation with bots
and AI says about us as humans: about our hopes and anxieties; our myths, stories, beliefs and
ideas about beings both real and artificial; and our attempts to attain perfection.
We are at a pivotal moment when our ancient infatuation with human-like beings with certain
attributes or superpowers - in mythology, religion and storytelling - is coinciding with our
ability to actually build some of these entities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science journalist Duncan (Experimental Man) takes a lighter approach to a serious issue the future relationship between humankind and thinking machines than readers drawn to it might appreciate. Building on the ideas of current thinkers, including Brian Greene, Dean Kamen, and Craig Venter, Duncan touches on concerns such as the limits (if any) of AI, and the impact of robot workers replacing most human ones. Duncan presents each chapter from the perspective of a visitor from the future, an initially intriguing premise that ultimately ill-serves the serious ethical problems he raises, such as whether negative memories should be preserved by a device able to preserve an individual's entire memory, or if autism represents a condition in need of curing, as posited by a neurologist's 2018 proposal for an "Opti-Brain" that would "collect real-time data on everything imaginable to do with your brain, physiology, and environment." Instead, silly satirical scenarios, such as President Trump's replacement by a robot doppelg nger, or autonomous military computers reenacting the ending of the Matthew Broderick movie WarGames, undermine the discussion. As a result, Duncan's book comes off as a missed opportunity to make the complexities surrounding artificial intelligence accessible by leavening, but not overwhelming, a topical subject with humor.