To order this book, please select one:
RAY KURZWEIL, AI scientist, inventor
Author of The Singularity Is Near
Author of The Singularity Is Near
"An entertaining and very thought-provoking ramble through the wilds of AI."
ERIC S. RAYMOND
"Hall argues that our future superintelligent friends in the mechanical kingdom may develop superior moral instincts. I'm almost convinced. I learned a lot from reading this book. You will too."
ROBERT A. FREITAS JR.
Author of "The Legal Rights of Robots"
and Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
Author of "The Legal Rights of Robots"
and Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now advancing at such a rapid clip that it has the potential to transform our world in ways both exciting and disturbing. Computers have already been designed that are capable of driving cars, playing soccer, and finding and organizing information on the Web in ways that no human could. With each new gain in processing power, will scientists soon be able to create supercomputers that can read a newspaper with understanding, or write a news story, or create novels, or even formulate laws? And if machine intelligence advances beyond human intelligence, will we need to start talking about a computer’s intentions?
These are some of the questions discussed by computer scientist J. Storrs Hall in this fascinating layperson’s guide to the latest developments in artificial intelligence. Drawing on a thirty-year career in artificial intelligence and computer science, Hall reviews the history of AI, discussing some of the major roadblocks that the field has recently overcome, and predicting the probable achievements in the near future. There is new excitement in the field over the amazing capabilities of the latest robots and renewed optimism that achieving human-level intelligence is a reachable goal.
But what will this mean for society and the relations between technology and human beings? Soon ethical concerns will arise and programmers will need to begin thinking about the computer counterparts of moral codes and how ethical interactions between humans and their machines will eventually affect society as a whole.
Weaving disparate threads together in an enlightening manner from cybernetics, computer science, psychology, philosophy of mind, neurophysiology, game theory, and economics, Hall provides an intriguing glimpse into the astonishing possibilities and dilemmas on the horizon.
More Praise for Beyond AI:
"To know where we are headed in AI, you must first know where we've been. Josh Hall masterfully traces the history of AI in terms easy to understand for the layperson and sophisticated enough to offer new insights for experts. But perhaps more impressive is his polymathic ability to tie together a broad range of issues in technology, social sciences, and the humanities needed for a truly holistic view of AI and its implications. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in AI."
PATRICK LIN, PhD, director of The Nanoethics Group
"Dr. Hall combines a highly accessible survey of artificial intelligence research with a glance at the distant future, where the implications of this field will play out in ways that are probably unimaginable by present-day thinkers."
DAVID S. TOURETZKY, research professor
Computer Science Department
Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
Carnegie Mellon University
Computer Science Department
Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
Carnegie Mellon University
J. Storrs Hall, PhD (Laporte, PA), the founding chief scientist of Nanorex, Inc., is a research fellow for the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and the author of Nanofuture, the “Nanotechnologies” section for The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy, and numerous scientific articles. He has designed technology for NASA and was a computer systems architect at the Laboratory for Computer Science Research at Rutgers University from 1985 to 1997.
ALT ISBN: 978-1-59102-511-5