Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Machine Theory & Artificial Intelligence

Stories brought us together. Books spread our ideas – and our mythologies. The internet promised infinite knowledge. The algorithm learned our secrets – and then turned us against each other. What will AI do? NEXUS is the thrilling account of how we arrived at this moment, and the urgent choices we must now make to survive – and to thrive.

When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. In exhilarating prose and with unparalleled access to those closest to Sam Altman, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.

We are about to cross a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon we will live surrounded by AIs. They will carry out complex tasks-operating businesses, producing unlimited digital content, running core government services and maintaining infrastructure. This will be a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. It represents nothing less than a step change in human capability. We are not prepared.

In today's technological society, with an unprecedented amount of information at our fingertips, learning plays a more central role than ever. In How We Learn, Stanislas Dehaene decodes its biological mechanisms, delving into the neuronal, synaptic and molecular processes taking place in the brain. He explains why youth is such a sensitive period, during which brain plasticity is maximal, but also assures us that our abilities continue into adulthood, and that we can enhance our learning and memory at any age.

From mechanical looms to combustion engines to early computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. In the past, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. Yet in A World Without Work, Daniel Susskind shows why this time really is different. Advances in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk.

Are we living in a simulation? MIT computer scientist Rizwan Virk draws from research and concepts from computer science, artificial intelligence, video games, quantum physics, and ancient mystics to explain why we may be living inside a simulated reality like the Matrix. The Simulation Hypothesis is the definitive book on simulation theory and is now completely updated to reflect the latest developments in artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Penguin Audio presents Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, read by Rob Shapiro. We stand at the beginning of a new era. What was once science fiction is fast becoming reality, as AI transforms war, crime, justice, jobs and society - and even our very sense of what it means to be human. More than any other technology, AI has the potential to revolutionise our collective future - and there's nobody better situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and cofounder of the Future of Life Institute, whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

Cutting through the noise of AI evangelists and AI doom-mongers, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, he urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach.

Thanks to recent advances in AI, humans have entered a world where we are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge. A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us - and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

This is what our future looks like: in the next decade, AI will be able to convince us that it’s human. During the 2030s, it will become ‘superintelligent’, vastly outstripping our capabilities by almost every measure. By 2045, it will be possible to connect our brains with these AIs using invisibly small nanotechnologies. Our minds and theirs will merge, expanding our consciousness more profoundly than we can fully comprehend, unlocking possibilities we can barely imagine. This is the singularity.

AI-powered programmes like ChatGPT have become valuable tools in the financial market, and proven to be incredibly beneficial to investors looking to identify investment opportunities and risks that might be overlooked by humans. Yet there is a darker side to these products, which we are only just beginning to fully understand. In this book, Rickards shows how models like ChatGPT work, and how they can be leveraged to capitalize on markets and avoid losses by providing accurate, up-to-date financial insights. Rickards’ guide is essential for anyone looking to navigate this new climate.

Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last. In this groundbreaking book on the biggest question facing humanity, Stuart Russell explains why he has come to consider his own discipline an existential threat to his own species, and lays out how we can change course before it's too late. There is no one better placed to assess the promise and perils of the dominant technology of the future than Russell, who has spent decades at the forefront of AI research.

Whether we like it or not, the AI revolution is coming to education. In Brave New Words, Salman Khan, the visionary behind Khan Academy, explores how artificial intelligence and GPT technology will transform learning, offering a roadmap for teachers, parents, and students to navigate this exciting (and sometimes intimidating) new world. An insider in the world of education technology, Khan explains the ins and outs of these cutting-edge tools and how they will forever change the way we learn and teach.

In The AI Con, the renowned AI insiders-turned-critics Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across all its forms, exposing it for what it really is: a mask for data theft, surveillance capitalism, and the devaluing of human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines.

Twelve bytes. Twelve eye-opening, mind-expanding, funny and provocative essays on the implications of artificial intelligence for the way we live and the way we love - from Sunday Times best-selling author Jeanette Winterson. In this original, deeply researched and lively new book, Jeanette Winterson traces the history of the AI revolution. She talks to some of the boldest and most imaginative thinkers in the field and looks to religion, myth and literature to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are just around the corner.

In a world captivated yet bewildered by artificial intelligence, spiritual icon Deepak Chopra explores AI's untapped potential to unlock the mystery of consciousness, positioning AI not as a threat, but as a powerful catalyst for personal and spiritual growth. Digital Dharma shows how the most popular, freely available chatbots can serve as guides through every level of human potential – survival and safety, emotional connection, self-worth, abundance, creativity, wisdom and the infinite possibilities of cosmic consciousness.

In this provocative, utterly original work of 'scientific fiction', Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and best-selling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In 10 gripping short stories, set 20 years in the future, they introduce listeners to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings.

Recent years have seen rapid advances in 'artificial' intelligence, which increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, unrecognised. These other beings are the animals, plants and natural systems that surround us, and are slowly revealing their complexity and knowledge - just as the new technologies we've built are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours.

In Against the Machine, “furiously gifted” (The Washington Post) novelist, poet, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth presents a wholly original—and terrifying—account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. With insight into the spiritual and economic roots of techno-capitalism, Kingsnorth reveals how the Machine, in the name of progress, has choked Western civilization, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us in its image.

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain-computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world’s problems.