Possible Minds

October 15, 2018
Brockman (This Idea Is Brilliant, editor), founder of the literary agency Brockman Inc., devotes this entry into his series of science-oriented essay anthologies to exploring the frontiers of artificial intelligence. The 25 contributors come from a wide range of disciplines and include philosopher Daniel Dennett, psychology professor Alison Gopnik, and Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn. While the authors disagree on the answers, they agree on the major question: what dangers might AI present to humankind? Within that framework, the essays offer a host of novel ideas. Several argue that AI has already become a hallmark of human culture, with genetics researcher George M. Church provocatively suggesting that modern, technology-using humans, when compared with Stone Age cultures, are already “transhumans.” Other essays underscore the necessity for ensuring that advanced AI acts in alignment with human values, while science historian George Dyson explores the difficulties inherent in controlling the technology, ending with the unsettling observation that “provably ‘good’ AI is a myth.” Readers will appreciate that the discussion is accompanied by intriguing explanations of AI development strategies, among them “deep learning,” generative adversarial networks, and inverse-reinforcement learning. The combination of theory and practice makes for enlightening, entertaining, and exciting reading.

December 1, 2018
Pithy essays on artificial intelligence.Since the 1990s, cultural impresario Brockman (This Idea Is Brilliant: Lost, Overlooked, and Underappreciated Scientific Concepts Everyone Should Know, 2018, etc.) has regularly asked prominent thinkers to address important issues. Since he is also the founder and publisher of edge.org and one of the nation's leading science literary agents, they are not inclined to refuse, so the result has been a long series of collections of thoughtful discourses on a single theme. At roughly seven to 15 pages apiece, these are not the usual Brockman tidbits but weighty disquisitions, most of which examine an aspect of AI that has received attention from numerous editors, including Brockman himself. Most contributors nod respectfully to Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), whose seminal 1950 book, The Human Use of Human Beings, announced that vastly advanced technology was imminent and essential for human welfare and that its major risk was that powerful men might use it as a tool of oppression. Writing before the digital revolution, he failed to predict that the technology itself (AI), not malevolent humans, might be the primary preoccupation. Max Tegmark, Frank Wilczek, and Stuart Russell worry that a superintelligent machine will share one of the primary goals of humans--self-preservation--disable its "off" switch, and look after its own interests. Optimists like Steven Pinker or David Deutsch emphasize that spectacular advances in computer power are the result of, as Pinker writes, "brute force power of faster chips and Bigger Data....Each system is an idiot savant, with little ability to leap to problems it was not set up to solve and a brittle mastery of those it was." Other contributors include George Dyson, Alison Gopnik, and Daniel Dennett.The question "will AI be beneficent or disastrous?" is approaching the status of a dead horse, but that hasn't prevented observers from whacking away at it. Readers who want to join the fun will not find a better introduction than this book.

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December 1, 2018
The nightmarish possibility of artificially intelligent (AI) machines usurping their creators has been a familiar theme in sf books and Hollywood movies since the inception of the genre. In his latest science anthology, Brockman (This Idea is Brilliant, 2018), publisher-editor of Edge.org, offers 25 diverse and provocative viewpoints on the still-evolving concern over AI's dark side from a cross-section of leading scientists, philosophers, and artists. Using Norbert Wiener's classic cautionary study on unfettered technology, The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), as a springboard, Brockman asked contributors to air their opinions about the good-AI-versus-evil-AI debate. Physicists Seth Lloyd and Judea Pearl believe AI programs have so many built-in limitations that worries about robotic domination are mostly unfounded, whereas others, such as Skype developer Jaan Tallinn, are more pessimistic, pointing out that silicon-based machines could simply destroy our environment because they don't need air to thrive. Readers interested in advanced technologies, AI, cyber security and cyber ethics, and neuroscience will find many rich ideas here to savor and contemplate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)