1984
Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real.
Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff’s attempt to find individuality.
2084: Artificial Intelligence, the Future of Humanity, and the God Question
Scientist and philosopher John C. Lennox addresses the questions of where humanity is going in terms of technological enhancement, bioengineering, and artificial intelligence.
He provides a clear overview of the current capacity of AI, its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the potential future implications, clearly defining the terms associated with this field and delineating between the current scientific facts and more speculative claims.
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
From mechanical looms to the combustion engine to the first computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines.
For centuries, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. But as Daniel Susskind demonstrates, this time really is different. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.
AI in Health: A Leader’s Guide to Winning in the New Age of Intelligent Health Systems
This book defines key technical, process, people, and ethical issues that need to be understood and addressed in successfully planning and executing an enterprise-wide AI plan. It provides clinical and business leaders with a framework for moving organizations from the aspiration to execution of intelligent systems to improve clinical, operational, and financial performance.
Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology
To combat our fundamental loss of emotional intelligence online, she cofounded Affectiva, the pioneer in the new field of Emotion AI, allowing our technology to understand humans the way we understand one another. Girl Decoded chronicles el Kaliouby’s journey from being a “nice Egyptian girl” to becoming a woman, carving her own path as she revolutionizes technology. But decoding herself—learning to express and act on her own emotions—would prove to be the biggest challenge of all.
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues–from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.
The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth
Online disinformation stormed our political process in 2016 and has only worsened since. Yet as Samuel Woolley shows in this urgent book, it may pale in comparison to what’s to come: humanlike automated voice systems, machine learning, “deepfake” AI-edited videos and images, interactive memes, virtual reality, and more. These technologies have the power not just to manipulate our politics, but to make us doubt our eyes and ears and even feelings.
The Reasonable Robot: Artificial Intelligence and the Law
AI and people do not compete on a level-playing field. Self-driving vehicles may be safer than human drivers, but laws often penalize such technology. People may provide superior customer service, but businesses are automating to reduce their taxes. AI may innovate more effectively, but an antiquated legal framework constrains inventive AI.
In The Reasonable Robot, Ryan Abbott argues that the law should not discriminate between AI and human behavior and proposes a new legal principle that will ultimately improve human well-being. This work should be read by anyone interested in the rapidly evolving relationship between AI and the law.
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best.
Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.
[Attached to comment] To Be a Machine : Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O’Connell takes a headlong dive into this burgeoning movement.
He travels to the laboratories, conferences, and basements of today’s foremost transhumanists, where he’s presented with the staggering possibilities and moral quandaries of new technologies like mind uploading, artificial superintelligence, cryonics, and device implants.