Artificial Philosophy

Social media came for our attention - now Chatbots are coming for our relationships. Nearly one-third of adults now turn to AI programmes like ChatGPT for companionship. For Gen Z, the figures are even more stark: eight out of ten say they could form a deep emotional attachment with a machine...

Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.

As technologies of automated computation rapidly transform human culture, we are being urged to believe that human minds are machines and machines are potentially minds. But what if the question of machine consciousness is not a hard problem awaiting better theories and technologies, but malformed—born from a metaphysics that first exiled feeling, purpose, and meaning from nature? Remembering the Human Microcosm in the Age of Mechanized Intelligence challenges the corporate myth of “artificial intelligence” and the emerging threat of cognitive enclosure: the attempt to meter and ...

What if the human mind is not a machine? In an age of artificial intelligence, algorithms, neural networks, and digital simulation, modern civilization is increasingly tempted by one powerful idea: consciousness is computation. The brain is hardware. Thought is software. Memory is storage. Understanding is output. Given enough complexity, the machine will become a mind. Roger Penrose refused to accept that answer. In Penrose and the Quantum Mystery of Mind, Clayton Louis Turnage explores one of the boldest and most controversial challenges to the machine model of consciousness. Penrose, a ...

What if consciousness does not begin in the brain alone, but in the body’s living contact with the world? Modern science often describes the mind in terms of neurons, computation, information, and representation. But before the mind becomes a theory, before perception becomes data, before the body becomes an object of study, we are already moving through a world of color, touch, distance, gesture, pain, memory, and meaning. In Merleau-Ponty and the Embodied Mind: Perception, Flesh, and the Living World, Clayton Louis Turnage explores one of the most important philosophical challenges to ...

Truer now than when it was written—the prophetic classic is back. Twenty-six years after its original publication, Borsook’s “smart, funny and irreverent” (The New York Times) critique of high-tech has proved a prescient assessment of a toxic ethos which has seeped...

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind examines where the self comes from – and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. “I Am a Strange Loop is a work of rigorous thinking, but it’s also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love: The Year of...

In a climate-ravaged landscape where AI and humans vie for political power, a journalist must unravel a murderous plot that will either upend the world or save it. 2050: Investigative journalist Marcus Tully is grieving his wife and unborn child, ten years after they perished in a deadly heat...

In the tradition of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and the work of Adam Grant comes an invigorating journey through the full range of intelligences that exist—from humans to animals to plants and beyond—arguing that, in the age of AI, understanding the unique smarts within us, and...

Consciousness is the greatest mystery of the human mind — the constant presence behind every thought, feeling, and perception. Consciousness Explained: Understanding the Philosophy, Science, and Theories of the Mind takes you on a deep and accessible journey into one of the most fascinating topics in philosophy and neuroscience. From ancient debates about the soul to cutting-edge theories of brain function, this book explores the nature of awareness, the mind-body problem, and the profound question of why subjective experience exists at all. Inside, you will discover the major ...

Artificial intelligence can write, advise, predict, summarize, imitate, optimize—and speak with astonishing confidence. Then Socrates arrives. Instead of asking what AI can do, he asks what intelligence is for. Instead of admiring productivity, he asks what the productive life is supposed to produce. And instead of accepting recommendations, predictions, therapy prompts, dating advice, political analysis, artistic shortcuts, and promises of immortality, he keeps asking the question modern life finds increasingly inconvenient: Why? Socrates vs. Artificial Intelligence is a fast, witty ...

A brilliant and defiant celebration of driving as a unique pathway of human freedom, by ""one of the most influential thinkers of our time"" (Sunday Times) ""Why We Drive weaves philosophers, thinkers, and scientific research with shade-tree mechanics and racers to defend our right to...

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more dynamic and ubiquitous, it is dramatically empowering people in all walks of life while also giving rise to urgent questions about the future of humanity—a historic challenge whose contours and consequences are revealed by three eminent thinkers in...

From Oxford's leading AI researcher comes a fun and accessible tour through the history and future of one of the most cutting edge and misunderstood field in science: Artificial Intelligence The somewhat ill-defined long-term aim of AI is to build machines that are conscious, self-aware, and...

A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future. One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions...

"There's joy in self-described "satellite nerd" James Bridle's British-accented voice as he narrates this audiobook about consciousness and the search for planetary intelligence." - AudioFile Magazine This audiobook is read by the author. Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s...

From the coauthor of Algorithms to Live By, an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human minds Everyone has a basic understanding of...

Jerry Fodor Explained: Modularity of Mind, Mental Representation, the Language of Thought, Cognitive Science, and AI is a practical introduction to one of the key figures in late twentieth-century philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Fodor helped define the case for explaining thought in terms of internal mental representations, symbolic structure, and computation. He also became a central voice in debates about perception, belief, meaning, and the limits of artificial intelligence. This book presents those arguments in clear language for readers who want a serious guide without ...

The only AI book that turns tech blunders into belly laughs — while sneaking in serious smarts. "A book every executive should have." — Andrew A., Entrepreneur “I’ve read books that make you rethink AI—this one transformed the way I talk about it.” – Fernanda C., Reviewer Ever screamed at Siri? Rolled your eyes at a robo-advisor? Wondered whether AI is actually coming for your job — or just your patience? Finance expert and tech insider Lynn Raebsamen (CFA) takes you behind the curtain on today's most powerful — and most hilariously fallible — technologies. From self-...

Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.