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Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era Hardcover – October 1, 2013
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"A hard-hitting book about the most important topic of this century and possibly beyond -- the issue of whether our species can survive. I wish it was science fiction but I know it's not."—Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype
“The compelling story of humanity's most critical challenge. A Silent Spring for the twenty-first century.”
—Michael Vassar, former President, Singularity Institute
“Barrat's book is excellently written and deeply researched. It does a great job of communicating to general readers the danger of mistakes in AI design and implementation.” —Bill Hibbard, author of Super-Intelligent Machines
"An important and disturbing book." —Huw Price, co-founder, Cambridge University Center for the Study of Existential Risk
“Our Final Invention is a thrilling detective story, and also the best book yet written on the most important problem of the twenty-first century.” —Luke Muehlhauser, Executive Director, Machine Intelligence Research Institute
“Enthusiasts dominate observers of progress in artificial intelligence; the minority who disagree are alarmed, articulate and perhaps growing in numbers, and Barrat delivers a thoughtful account of their worries.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Science fiction has long explored the implications of humanlike machines (think of Asimov’s I, Robot), but Barrat’s thoughtful treatment adds a dose of reality.” —Science News
“This book makes an important case that without extraordinary care in our planning, powerful ‘thinking’ machines present at least as many risks as benefits. … Our Final Invention makes an excellent read for technophiles as well as readers wishing to get a glimpse of the near future as colored by rapidly improving technological competence.” —New York Journal of Books
"A dark new book by James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, lays out a strong case for why we should be at least a little worried." —NewYorker.com
"You can skip coffee this week — Our Final Invention will keep you wide-awake." —Singularity Hub
"Barrat has talked to all the significant American players in the effort to create recursively self-improving artificial general intelligence in machines. He makes a strong case that AGI with human-level intelligence will be developed in the next couple of decades. … His thoughtful case about the dangers of ASI gives even the most cheerful technological optimist much to think about." —Reason
"If you read just one book that makes you confront scary high-tech realities that we’ll soon have no choice but to address, make it this one." —The Washington Post
About the Author
James Barrat is a documentary filmmaker who’s written and produced films for National Geographic, Discovery, PBS, and many other broadcasters in the United States and Europe. He lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife and two children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
55 of 58 people found the following review helpful
By
Jeff D.
on October 4, 2013
Format: Hardcover
3 Comments
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"Our Final Invention" is a fascinating and well-written look at the risks posed by artificial super-intelligence. As other reviewers have pointed out, this book offers a relatively pessimistic take on the subject, but there is a lot of value in that perspective. There are plenty of other books, by Ray Kurzweil and others, that offer the optimistic viewpoint.
The danger highlighted by the book is that an intelligent machine would turn its energies toward building even better versions of itself--creating an accelerating feedback loop that could culminate in a machine THOUSANDS of times more intelligent than any human. Once such an intelligence "escaped from its box" there would be no way to protect ourselves.
This book focuses entirely on the long term risk of super-intelligence and does not touch at all on the near term consequences of less advanced and more specialized AI. For example, millions of routine jobs will be lost and the economy will be transformed, and this could happen quite soon. (For more on that check out also The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future).
In the longer run, the points raised in Our Final Invention are well worth thinking about. Some experts feel that an advanced AI would be controlled by programming in "friendliness" right from the start. Just as humans have basic drives (food, shelter, sex, etc.) a machine might be programmed to have an essential need to help humanity. As the author points out, however, in humans these basic drives often produce unpleasant and unexpected consequences -- like for example suicide bombers.Read more ›
The danger highlighted by the book is that an intelligent machine would turn its energies toward building even better versions of itself--creating an accelerating feedback loop that could culminate in a machine THOUSANDS of times more intelligent than any human. Once such an intelligence "escaped from its box" there would be no way to protect ourselves.
This book focuses entirely on the long term risk of super-intelligence and does not touch at all on the near term consequences of less advanced and more specialized AI. For example, millions of routine jobs will be lost and the economy will be transformed, and this could happen quite soon. (For more on that check out also The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future).
In the longer run, the points raised in Our Final Invention are well worth thinking about. Some experts feel that an advanced AI would be controlled by programming in "friendliness" right from the start. Just as humans have basic drives (food, shelter, sex, etc.) a machine might be programmed to have an essential need to help humanity. As the author points out, however, in humans these basic drives often produce unpleasant and unexpected consequences -- like for example suicide bombers.Read more ›
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61 of 67 people found the following review helpful
By
Scott Meredith
on October 14, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition
Verified Purchase
3 Comments
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Just done the new-ish book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat. It explains the inevitably of super-intelligent machines evolving to the point of wiping out all biological life in the galaxy - with opening day coming soon to a species near you (yours).
First off I have to say this is a very enjoyable read. This guy has the kind of snappy, crisp, slightly sarcastic, slightly smartass style that I enjoy. He has some sense of humor. (That's a human trait right there which I bet our smarty-pants AI Overlords won't be able to replicate convincingly.)
So it's fun. And though as somebody with a doctorate from MIT earned through cross-disciplinary work in Theoretical Linguistics, Computational Linguistics at the MIT AI Lab, and speech modeling at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, not to mention my 25 years as a Senior Researcher in high tech for companies including IBM, Apple, and Microsoft I can claim to know some few things about this subject, yet still I learned a lot about the current state of the art from this guy. He particularly emphasizes the small attempted counterweigth efforts to offest Kurzweil's manic robotic boosterism for his uptopian Singularity, which boils down basically to a few guys chatting over the interet about how to create "Friendly AI".
Well ... good luck suckers! ... seems to be the author's final conclusion on the dim hope that super intelligent systems could be constrained to maintain a commitment ot honor any kind of human moral values over many interations of recursive upgrading and exponentially awesome self-agrandizement.
Basically these machines will end up as gods.Read more ›
First off I have to say this is a very enjoyable read. This guy has the kind of snappy, crisp, slightly sarcastic, slightly smartass style that I enjoy. He has some sense of humor. (That's a human trait right there which I bet our smarty-pants AI Overlords won't be able to replicate convincingly.)
So it's fun. And though as somebody with a doctorate from MIT earned through cross-disciplinary work in Theoretical Linguistics, Computational Linguistics at the MIT AI Lab, and speech modeling at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, not to mention my 25 years as a Senior Researcher in high tech for companies including IBM, Apple, and Microsoft I can claim to know some few things about this subject, yet still I learned a lot about the current state of the art from this guy. He particularly emphasizes the small attempted counterweigth efforts to offest Kurzweil's manic robotic boosterism for his uptopian Singularity, which boils down basically to a few guys chatting over the interet about how to create "Friendly AI".
Well ... good luck suckers! ... seems to be the author's final conclusion on the dim hope that super intelligent systems could be constrained to maintain a commitment ot honor any kind of human moral values over many interations of recursive upgrading and exponentially awesome self-agrandizement.
Basically these machines will end up as gods.Read more ›
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By
Jacob Donkin
on July 3, 2014
Format: Hardcover
Verified Purchase
1 Comment
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As someone who struggles to finish books in their entirety, I found Our Final Invention by James Barrat highly readable, deeply informative, and utterly gripping. The book contains a powerful message: through competition, distrust, desire and curiosity, humans will inevitably create an artificial intelligence (AI) that rivals or surpasses our own. Thus, it is wise and necessary to invest now in mitigation efforts and potential safeguards -- increased research and advocacy for AI risk and, most importantly, producing friendly AI.
Barrat covers a lot of ground, but his main argument is summarized as follows: Currently, we humans regularly utilize narrow AI technology (technology capable of achieving specific, programmed goals through unassisted human computing -- Siri, Google search, IBM's Watson, etc). We are also experimenting with "black box" tools and techniques (programs where inputs and outputs are understood and measurable, but the processes in between aren't -- genetic algorithms/programming and software that writes better software) and artificial neural networking (ANN), as seen through efforts to reverse engineer the human brain. And, below the surface, there is an ongoing race between world powers (driven mainly by national security, defense, and international business interests) and guided by AI developers to develop and achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- human-level artificial intelligence. The problem is that once AGI is achieved it will be very difficult to manage, and may very well result in the manifestation of artificial super intelligence (ASI) -- greater than human-level intelligence.
ASI could theoretically become thousands of times smarter than the smartest human being alive.Read more ›
Barrat covers a lot of ground, but his main argument is summarized as follows: Currently, we humans regularly utilize narrow AI technology (technology capable of achieving specific, programmed goals through unassisted human computing -- Siri, Google search, IBM's Watson, etc). We are also experimenting with "black box" tools and techniques (programs where inputs and outputs are understood and measurable, but the processes in between aren't -- genetic algorithms/programming and software that writes better software) and artificial neural networking (ANN), as seen through efforts to reverse engineer the human brain. And, below the surface, there is an ongoing race between world powers (driven mainly by national security, defense, and international business interests) and guided by AI developers to develop and achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- human-level artificial intelligence. The problem is that once AGI is achieved it will be very difficult to manage, and may very well result in the manifestation of artificial super intelligence (ASI) -- greater than human-level intelligence.
ASI could theoretically become thousands of times smarter than the smartest human being alive.Read more ›
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