Worried a Robot Apocalypse Is Imminent?

This content has been archived. It may no longer be accurate or relevant.

From The Wall Street Journal:

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You

Elevator Pitch: Ideal for those intrigued and/or mildly unnerved by the increasing role A.I. plays in modern life (and our future), this book is accessible enough to educate you while easing anxieties about the coming robot apocalypse. A surprisingly hilarious read, it presents a view of A.I. that is more “Office Space” than “The Terminator.” Typical insight: A.I. that can’t write a coherent cake recipe is probably not going to take over the world.

Very Brief Excerpt: “For the foreseeable future, the danger will not be that A.I. is too smart but that it’s not smart enough.”

Surprising Factoid: A lot of what we think are social-media bots are almost definitely humans being (poorly) paid to act as a bot. People stealing the jobs of robots: How meta.

. . . .

The Creativity Code

By Marcus du Sautoy

Elevator Pitch: What starts as an exploration of the many strides—and failures—A.I. has made in the realm of artistic expression turns out to be an ambitious meditation on the meaning of creativity and consciousness. It shines in finding humanlike traits in algorithms; one chapter breathlessly documents the matches between Mr. Hassabis’s algorithm and a world champion of Go, a game many scientists said a computer could never win.

Very Brief Excerpt: “Machines might ultimately help us…become less like machines.”

Surprising Factoid: As an example of “overfitting,” the book includes a mathematical model that accidentally predicts the human population will drop to zero by 2028. Probably an error, but better live it up now—just in case.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (PG apologizes for the paywall, but hasn’t figured out a way around it.)