Our Final Invention

Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

De: James Barrat

Narrado por: Gary Dana

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?

©2013 James Barrat (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Great book, a little repetitive

The content certainly makes the case for caution, risks, benefits, and AI invention awareness. I wonder, though, if the material could still be adequately covered without the exhibited repetition.

Good but biased.

Author omits details on the NON-armageddon outcome side. Granted, the book is about Armageddon, but he should've fleshed out the opposing view.

Required reading for everyone

Wow I really enjoyed this book. While I am not a fanatic about AI in any sense I do think this book should be required reading for everyone. I work in the technology sector and we get blindingly focused on our task and don’t objectively view any negative consequences of our work. But we do implement and work within our pre described boundaries. EVERYONE is waiting and helping to speed up the introduction of AGI, and its introduction will change everything.

A good read but...

On the dangers of AI. A good read, many ideas. The author (and everyone else on the planet) has no idea what will really happen when we invent Artificial General Intelligence, but it will happen. Worth reading as it covers about every idea possible on what could happen. Given Humanity's track record of predicting the future; what will actually happen will be none-of-the-above.

Apparently Skynet is real and it's going to take over everything

The author tells the reader multiple times that the AI are going to take over everything and destroy the earth. He has multiple interviews with futurists that all seem relatively optimistic about our future robot overlords but each vignette ends with talk of the coming disaster. I appreciate the potential for disaster. I think it is a good bit overblown, though.

I think it will be a very long time before we have anything even remotely approaching artificial general intelligence. And even if one emerges there is no reason to assume it will be high and a sociopathic manner. We have a desire not to be destroyed because of our emotional subsystem. We fear annihilation. We fear death.

Without the skewing of behavioral weighting of nodes in mind network that prioritize things like staying alive A nonhuman intelligence will not care if we want to pull the plug. It would not fear death anymore than my computer fears being turned off.

I don't think it's ethical to turn it off. I think that a sapient Computer should be afforded the rights we give to all sapient beings.

But I don't think that our robot overlords are going to be all that scary. I am much more concerned about the sociopathic humans that will be driving the smart but not yet sentient computers.

I think that if a super intelligence emerges it will probably be more of a benevolent dictator if it decides to interfere with humans and "help "them.

Good material Bad delivery

The subject topic was interesting and well thought out, but the narrator sounded like a robot himself. Maybe the producers planned it that way but over 7 hours of monotone narration is not fun.

Read by a robot.

I suppose it's appropriate for a book about AI to be read by a robot, but it was distracting nonetheless.

NB

Narrator's voice was not the best.
Author does a great job of analyzing data and presenting valid arguments, but fails to mention any redeeming qualities of strong AI.

A must-read for everyone

Much like climate change or nuclear threat, runaway AI is a growing concern that the general public needs to pay more heed towards. While we have both social movements and experts on the other two issues, more awareness on the AI threat is needed, especially given the current rate of its exceleration. Spreading the word of this book can bring that threat to light, and thus I cannot recommend this audiobook enough.

Fascinating - something everyone should be aware o

really interesting, written for the layman. only complaint is that it's a bit drawn out. I feel like most of the points are made if the first half of the book