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Our Final Invention

Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

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Our Final Invention

By: James Barrat
Narrated by: Gary Dana
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About this listen

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. Computer Science History & Culture Machine Theory & Artificial Intelligence Technology Artificial Intelligence Data Science Machine Learning Robotics AI and Humanity

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All stars
Most relevant
Ironically this interesting book on the dangers of AI is read by a voice actor with an oddly robotic delivery - hard to listen to as a result.

Interesting content - robotic delivery

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as the name suggests, we know there's not much we can do once the AI Ginni is out of the bottle...
but learning about how it's being developed by finance, defence n terrorist organizations makes one feel a lot more scared than b4...
in any case there was little speculation. the book is mostly factual so it's a bit dissapointing because we read this stuff written by experts to see what their wildest imagination is so we get a better sense of it. could have explored more "possible scenarios" in wild speculation.
otherwise good summary of how we r doomed.

It is as expected for the most part. just scarier.

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Struggling to know if the narrator is human, or AI. Authors discusses this very concept in first few chapters. Listen for ‘The Turing Test’.

Great choice of narrator

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Many pessimistic assumptions about technology without almost any proof or anything to back it up except quotes from "famous people in the field".

Raises some good concerns but provides no tangeable solutions.

Many pessimistic assumptions

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Love the book and the approach taken by the Author to explain the issues and challenges we are likely to face. Some of the content is a little dated but that's to be expected of a book like this.

Very insightful and thought provoking

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