''Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era'' is a 2013 non-fiction book by the American author James Barrat. The book discusses the potential benefits and possible risks of human-level (

AGI Silver iodide is an inorganic compound with the formula Ag I. The compound is a bright yellow solid, but samples almost always contain impurities of metallic silver that give a gray coloration. The silver contamination arises because AgI is hig ...

) or super-human ( ASI)

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

. Those supposed risks include extermination of the human race.

Summary

James Barrat weaves together explanations of AI concepts, AI history, and interviews with prominent AI researchers including

Eliezer Yudkowsky Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (born September 11, 1979) is an American decision theory and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and writer, best known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence. He is a co-founder and research ...

and

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and e ...

. The book starts with an account of how an

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...

could become an artificial super-intelligence through recursive self-improvement. In subsequent chapters, the book covers the history of AI, including an account of the work done by

I. J. Good Irving John Good (9 December 1916 – 5 April 2009)The Times of 16-apr-09, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece was a British mathematician who worked as a cryptologist at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing. Afte ...

, up to the work and ideas of researchers in the field today. Throughout the book, Barrat takes a cautionary tone, focusing on the threats artificial super-intelligence poses to human existence. Barrat emphasizes how difficult it would be to control or even to predict the actions of something that may become orders of magnitude more intelligent than the most intelligent humans.

Reception

On 13 December 2013, journalist Matt Miller interviewed Barrat for his

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

, "This... is interesting". The interview and related matters to Barrat's book, ''Our Final Invention'', were then captured in Miller's weekly opinion piece for ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

''.

Seth Baum Seth Baum is an American researcher involved in the field of risk research. He is the executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI), a think tank focused on existential risk. He is also affiliated with the Blue Marble Space I ...

, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and one of the people cited by Barrat in his book, reviewed the book favorably on '' Scientific American's'' "invited guest" blog, calling it a welcome counterpoint to the vision articulated by

in his book '' The Singularity is Near''.

Gary Marcus Gary F. Marcus (born February 8, 1970) is a professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University. In 2014 he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine-learning company later acquired by Uber. Marcus's books include '' Guita ...

questions Barrat's argument "that tendencies toward self-preservation and resource acquisition are inherent in any sufficiently complex, goal-driven system", noting that present-day AI does not have such drives, but Marcus concedes "that the goals of machines could change as they get smarter", and he feels that "Barrat is right to ask" about these important issues. ''Our Final Invention'' was a ''Huffington Post'' Definitive Tech Book of 2013.

References

External links

Kirkus ReviewScientific American Review
{{Existential risk from artificial intelligence 2013 non-fiction books Futurology books Existential risk from artificial general intelligence Thomas Dunne Books books Non-fiction books about Artificial intelligence

Summary

Reception

See also

References

External links