Edge Books

Edge Books

John Brockman [10.6.15]

What to Think About Machines That Think

Edge Annual Question Series

 

STEVEN PINKER consideres the internal metal life of robots * FRANK TIPLER explains how artificial intelligence (AI) will save humanity and colonize space * MARTIN REES explores why humans are merely an evolutionary stage on the path to a machine-dominated world * NICHOLAS CARR examines the challenges of maintaining control over machines * DANIEL C. DENNETT identifies the true danger of the coming technological "singularity" * Nobel Prize winner FRANK WILCZEK asserts that all intelligence is machine intelligence * musician BRIAN ENO suggests that human society remains our most powerful supercomputer * GEORGE DYSON argues that genuine creative thinking will always be analog, not digital * ALISON GOPNIK asks whether machines will ever be as smart as a three-year-old * RICHARD THALERthinks human stupidity will always impede artifical intelligence * Wired founder KEVIN KELLYcalls AIs an "alien intelligence" * plus contributions from Nobel Prize winner JOHN C. MATHER, MATT RIDLEY, FREEMAN DYSON, DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, HELEN FISHER, SAM HARRIS, GEORGE CHURCH, HANS ULRICH OBRIST, ESTHER DYSON, NICK BOSTROM, and others.

 


Life

The "Best of Edge" Book Series

 

Pulitzer Prize winner EDWARD O. WILSON reveals what ants can teach us about building a superorganism—and, in turn, about how cells build an organism * Harvard University’s DANIEL LIEBERMAN reports on long-distance running and the evolution of the human body * The Selfish Gene author RICHARD DAWKINS and genetics pioneer J. CRAIG VENTER compare genes to digital information, and sketch the frontiers of genomic research * Yale evolutionary ornithologist RICHARD PRUM explains what bird mating rituals can teach us about the evolution of aesthetic beauty * Nobel Prize–winning chemist KARY MULLIS covers cutting-edge immune treatments for dangerous viruses * DAVID HAIG, professor of biology at Harvard, reports new findings on genomic imprinting: how inherited genes can be expressed differently depending on whether they come from the mother or father * Princeton physicist FREEMAN DYSONexplores whether the biological processes of life are analog or digital * Stanford professor of bioengineering DREW ENDY asks how we can make living organisms easier to engineer, and whether we should * Futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near RAY KURZWEIL describes new biotechnologies that have the potential to greatly expand the human life span . . . and more.