Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence.. Good book for the curious about Artificial Intelligence. Calum Chace did a good job of providing an overview of the history of AI, how we got to where we are and some possibilities of what is to come. Fascinating look into our future..
Artificial intelligence is our most powerful technology and, in the coming decades, it’ll change everything in our lives. If we get it right, it’ll make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong…well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome.
Surviving AI is a concise, easy guide to what’s coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).
Artificial intelligence is our most powerful technology, and in the coming decades it will change everything in our lives. If we get it right it will make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong… well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome.
This London Futurists event features author Calum Chace, sharing insights from his recently published book “Surviving AI”, and taking part in a conversation with the audience.
Here the contents of the book are;
Introduction
Part One: ANI
1. AI in the past and present
2. Tomorrow’s artificial narrow intelligence (ANI)
3. From digital disruption to economic singularity
Part Two: AGI
4. Can we make an artificial general intelligence (AGI)?
5. When might the first AGI arrive?
Part Three: ASI
6. Will AGI lead to superintelligence (ASI)?
7. Will superintelligence be beneficial?
Part Four: FAI
8. Can we ensure that superintelligence is “friendly” (FAI)?
Conclusion: Surviving AI
9. Summary, conclusions, recommendations
Calum Chace writes and talks about the impact Artificial Intelligence has on humanity. In his ThinkNation talk he highlighted the amazing opportunities of AI plus explains why it’s one of the few genuine threats to mankind’s existence.
“Understanding AI – its promise and its dangers – is emerging as one of the great challenges of coming decades and this is an invaluable guide to anyone who’s interested, confused, excited or scared.” David Shukman – BBC Science Editor
“Calum Chace is a prescient messenger of the risks and rewards of artificial intelligence. In “Surviving AI” he has identified the most essential issues and developed them with insight and wit – so that the very framing of the questions aids our search for answers. Chace’s sensible balance between AI’s promise and peril makes “Surviving AI” an excellent primer for anyone interested in what’s happening, how we got here, and where we are headed.” Kenneth Cukier – co-author of “Big Data”
“If you’re not thinking about AI, you’re not thinking. “Surviving AI” combines an essential grounding in the state of the art with a survey of scenarios that will be discussed with equal vigor at cocktail parties and academic colloquia.” Chris Meyer – author of “Blur”, “It’s Alive”, and “Standing on the Sun”
“The appearance of Calum Chace’s book is of some considerable personal satisfaction to me, because it signifies the fact that the level of social awareness of the rise of massively intelligent machines has finally reached the mainstream. If you want to survive the next few decades, you cannot afford NOT to read Chace’s book.” Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis – former director of the Artificial Brain Lab, Xiamen University, China
Who is Calum Chace?
Calum studied philosophy at Oxford University, where he discovered that the science fiction he had been reading since early boyhood is actually philosophy in fancy dress.
He published “Surviving AI”, a non-fiction review of the promise and peril of artificial intelligence in September 2015. Previously, he published “Pandora’s Brain”, a novel about the first conscious machine.
He is a regular speaker on artificial intelligence and related technologies, and runs a blog on the subject at www.pandoras-brain.com.
He is also the co-author of The Internet Startup Bible, a business best-seller published by Random House in 2000.
Prior to writing Pandora’s Brain, Calum had a 30-year career in business, in which he was a marketer, a strategy consultant and a CEO.