Superintelligence poses the questions:
What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence?
Will artificial agents save or destroy us?
Author Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.
As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move.
So, will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?
To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations.
Read the book and learn about:
Oracles, genies, singletons;
Boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime;
Humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development;
Indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings;
Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution;
Artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence.
This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain. Yet the writing is so lucid that it somehow makes it all seem easy.
About the author
Nick Bostrom is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University
and founding Director of the Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research Centre and of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School.
Superintelligence poses the questions:
What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence?
Will artificial agents save or destroy us?
Author Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.
As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move.
So, will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?
To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations.
Read the book and learn about:
Oracles, genies, singletons;
Boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime;
Humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development;
Indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings;
Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution;
Artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence.
This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain. Yet the writing is so lucid that it somehow makes it all seem easy.
About the author
Nick Bostrom is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University
and founding Director of the Strategic Artificial Intelligence Research Centre and of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School.