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Title: Our Final Invention

Subtitle: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

Author: James Barrat

Narrator: Gary Dana

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-29-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 448 votes

Genres: Science & Technology, Technology

Publisher's Summary:

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 AIs 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?

Members Reviews:

Kind of chilling

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, mostly because it's the kind of book I would want to discuss with someone after. There are so many speculations in this book that would be fun to explore.

How could the performance have been better?

Oh, I thought they actually used text to speech software to record this title. It was quite monotonous and slow. I used the x2 option to compensate.

Was Our Final Invention worth the listening time?

Yes, but take it all with a grain of salt. Apply the same skepticism the author encourages you to take towards the other authors writing a more utopic vision for AI. As always the future probably lies somewhere in the middle. It was a lot of information, I'll probably be seeking out other books from some of the people he mentions.

Any additional comments?

My biggest frustration was that his inconsistent ideas about the anthropomorphizing of AI. He rejected any human qualities that would be good, but was okay attributing human qualities that would be bad. For example, Dismissing that AI would ever get bored, that's a human quality. But claims that they would of course desire freedom? That sort of cherry picking of anthropomorphized traits to support his thesis.

Fascinating - something everyone should be aware o

really interesting, written for the layman. only complaint is that it's a bit drawn out. I feel like most of the points are made if the first half of the book

Alarmist, but an important alarm

Barat writes in layperson's terms because he believes the debate about artificial intelligence (AI) needs to be shared by all people, and that the fundamental ethical questions do not require elaborate AI expertise.

The tone of the book is somewhat alarmist, but that is because he is documenting alarming things. I've seen some reviews that critique the work as repetitive, but I think those folks are missing the point. He is working through how different approaches to AI development all reinforce the same conclusion that we are entering an era that is extremely dangerous to human survival.