"This book presents an ensemble cast of AI thinkers, but its elitism fails to entertain the lesser mortal." according to Hindu Business Line.
In the history of mankind’s scientific endeavours, perhaps no other
advancement has been talked about as much before it actually came to
pass as artificial intelligence (AI). The subject has provided rich
fodder for writers of science fiction books and filmmakers, who have
been speculating about the nature of the technology for well over half a
century.
And now, with the culmination of decades of progress in building
advanced computing devices and machine learning putting the world on the
cusp of true AI, the ground is finally fertile for philosophers,
scientists and all manner of other experts and thinkers to jump into the
discussion with their own vision of the future of the thinking machine.
What to Think About Machines That Think is a compilation of
incredibly short essays on AI, edited by John Brockman, the
not-so-well-known literary agent to some of the finest minds of our
times.
Brockman has his roots in the same avant-garde Greenwich Village scene
in New York of the 1970s that nurtured the genius of creative thinkers
such as Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol.
In the mid-1990s, Brockman famously proposed the concept of the ‘Third
Culture’, referring to the emergence of a new breed of intellectuals who
were communicating the scientific message directly to the masses,
cutting out the traditional men of letters, as science increasingly
became a part of popular culture.
Brockman currently runs the ‘online science salon’ edge.org
(which The Guardian once called “the world’s smartest website”). The
Edge Question, which he poses every year to his extended network of
exceedingly intelligent friends and clients, is a simple, direct
question that seeks to push the boundaries of understanding on a burning
scientific issue.
Year 2015’s question prompts respondents to ruminate on the potential
technological, ethical and even emotional issues that will arise when
the first machines start to think independently.
Future glancing
The book is ostensibly an attempt at peering into the future by standing
on the shoulders of giants in the fields of cognitive science,
psychology, machine learning, physics, robotics, cybernetics,
philosophy, economic theory, anthropology, neuroscience and several
other sciences, all of which have a bearing on the development of AI.
The essays have no particular format, but are — for the most part —
concise and highly accessible. The style of writing changes constantly —
a given when a book features nearly 200 different authors — and the end
result is only engaging some of the time.
Some essays, written by experts in fields that are at best tangentially
related to AI such as the musician Brian Eno or the ad-man Rory
Sutherland, feel overly speculative and superfluous.
Meanwhile, those by authority figures such as philosopher Nick Bostrom, whose Superintelligence
is one of the most influential books on AI in recent times and Harvard
psychologist and cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker seem to have lacked
depth and could have been a lot longer than they were.
The compilation does not make for particularly easy reading. Despite the
plethora of PhDs, published literature and sundry qualifications that
back them up, it is easy for a casual reader to wonder whether any of
the contributors featured in the book actually know what they’re talking
about.
Biases and intelligence
AI is a field that is still in a nascent stage of development and its
importance to human civilisation means that conversations regarding its
implications have begun very early.
This also means that talking about artificial general intelligence — a
machine that can really think for itself, at this stage almost certainly
involves a certain degree of gazing into a crystal ball that is clouded
by personal biases.
Read more...
Source: Hindu Business Line
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