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The Most Human Human
- What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
- Narrated by: Brian Christian
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can “think.” Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Turing Test convenes a panel of judges who pose questions—ranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums—to hidden contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and which is a computer. The machine that most often fools the panel wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, bizarre and intriguing, for the Most Human Human. In 2008, the top AI program came short of passing the Turing Test by just one astonishing vote. In 2009, Brian Christian was chosen to participate, and he set out to make sure Homo sapiens would prevail. The author’s quest to be deemed more human than a computer opens a window onto our own nature. Interweaving modern phenomena like customer service “chatbots” and men using programmed dialogue to pick up women in bars with insights from fields as diverse as chess, psychiatry, and the law, Brian Christian examines the philosophical, biological, and moral issues raised by the Turing Test. One central definition of human has been “a being that could reason.” If computers can reason, what does that mean for the special place we reserve for humanity?
Critic reviews
"THE MOST HUMAN HUMAN is immensely ambitious and bold, intellectually provocative, while at the same time entertaining and witty – a delightful book about how to live a meaningful, thriving life." (Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dreams and Ghost)
"A book exploring the wild frontiers of chat-bots is appealing enough; I never expected to discover in its pages such an eye-opening inquest into human imagination, thought, conversation, love and deception. Who would have guessed that the best way to understand humanity was to study its imitators?" (David Eagleman, author of Sum and Why The Net)
"This is a strange, fertile, and sometimes beautiful book. It has been said that man creates images of himself, then comes to resemble the images. Something like this seems to be going on with the computer. Brian Christian writes with a rare combination of what Pascal took to be two contrary mindsets: the spirit of geometry and the spirit of finesse. He takes both the deep limitations and halting progress of artificial intelligence as an occasion for thinking about the most human activity - the art of conversation." (Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft)
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- Unabridged
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Best-selling social historian Charles Murray has written a delightfully fussy - and entertaining - book on the hidden rules of the road in the workplace - and in life - from the standpoint of an admonishing, but encouraging, workplace grouch and taskmaster. Why the curmudgeon? The fact is that most older, more senior people in the workplace are closet curmudgeons. In today's politically correct world, they may hide their displeasure over your misuse of grammar or your overly familiar use of their first name without an express invitation. But don't be fooled by their pleasant demeanor....
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Good Book: From one curmudgeon to another
- By DaWoolf on 05-22-14
By: Charles Murray
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Borrowing Brilliance
- The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others
- By: David Kord Murray
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
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As a former aerospace scientist, Fortune 500 executive, chief innovation officer of two major companies, inventor and software entrepreneur, David Murray has made a living by coming up with new and innovative ideas. In Borrowing Brilliance he explains the origins and evolution of a business idea by showing you how new ideas are merely the combination of existing ideas.
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Really good but...
- By MasterMind Mentor International on 07-20-20
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The Plateau Effect
- Getting From Stuck to Success
- By: Bob Sullivan, Hugh Thompson
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Plateau Effect is a powerful law of nature that affects everyone. Learn to identify plateaus and break through any stagnancy in your life - from diet and exercise, to work, to relationships. The Plateau Effect shows how athletes, scientists, therapists, companies, and musicians around the world are learning to break through their plateau - to turn off the forces that cause people to “get used to” things - and turn on human potential and happiness in ways that seemed impossible.
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Heath
- By Oliver Nielsen on 07-22-13
By: Bob Sullivan, and others
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Now You See It
- How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn
- By: Cathy N. Davidson
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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When Duke University gave free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics said they were wasting their money. Yet when the students in practically every discipline invented academic uses for the music players, suddenly the idea could be seen in a new light - as an innovative way to turn learning on its head. Using cutting-edge research on the brain, Cathy N. Davidson show how attention blindness has produced one of our society's greatest challenges.
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3 Reasons to Read
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
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You Are Now Less Dumb
- How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself
- By: David McRaney
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality - except we’re not. But that's okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of 15 more ways we fool ourselves every day. This smart and highly entertaining audiobook will be wowing listeners for years to come.
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Not a lot of guidance
- By A. Yoshida on 02-08-14
By: David McRaney
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Accidental Genius
- Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight and Content
- By: Mark Levy
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
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When it comes to creating ideas, we hold ourselves back. Thats because inside each of us is an internal editor whose job is to forever polish our thoughts, so we sound smart and in control, and so that we fit into society. But what happens when we encounter problems for which such conventional thinking fails us? How do we get unstuck? For Mark Levy, the answer is freewriting....
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Great Ideas
- By Amazon Customer on 12-31-10
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In Pursuit of Elegance
- Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing
- By: Matthew E. May
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
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In this thought-provoking exploration, Matthew May defines elegance as the elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power, and pinpoints the four key elements that characterize it: seduction, subtraction, symmetry, and sustainability. In a story-driven narrative that sheds light on the need for elegance in design, engineering, physics, art, urban planning, sports, and work, May offers a surprising array of stories that illustrate why what's "not there" often matters more than what is.
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I love elegance, but this book isn't elegant
- By Oliver Nielsen on 06-26-11
By: Matthew E. May
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Mindwise
- Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
- By: Nicholas Epley
- Narrated by: Nicholas Epley
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?
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Finally gave up - no real point
- By Thomas on 05-12-14
By: Nicholas Epley
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The Upside of Irrationality
- The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
- By: Dan Ariely
- Narrated by: Simon Jones
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
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Overall
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In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job.
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Not as good as the first
- By Stephen on 06-20-10
By: Dan Ariely
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Seven Games
- A Human History
- By: Oliver Roeder
- Narrated by: William Sarris
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
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Performance
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Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.
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Mostly about AI
- By A. Hoffmann on 04-08-22
By: Oliver Roeder
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The Secret Life of Pronouns
- What Our Words Say About Us
- By: James W. Pennebaker
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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We spend our lives communicating. In the last 50 years, we've zoomed through radically different forms of communication, from typewriters to tablet computers, text messages to tweets. We generate more and more words with each passing day. Hiding in that deluge of language are amazing insights into who we are, how we think, and what we feel.
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Sticks and Stones and Words Can Really Help You
- By Lynn on 09-24-12
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Turned On
- Science, Sex and Robots
- By: Kate Devlin
- Narrated by: Kate Devlin
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Sexual activity is central to our very existence; it shapes how we think, how we act and how we live. With advances in technology come machines that may one day think independently. What will happen to us when we form close relationships with these intelligent systems? Sex robots are here and here to stay, and more are coming. This audiobook explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us and the society in which we live. It explores the social changes arising from emerging technologies and our relationships with the machines that may someday care for us and about us.
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Nuanced, Smart, and Compassionate
- By Karen on 01-20-19
By: Kate Devlin
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What listeners say about The Most Human Human
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- David Everling
- 04-09-11
Engaging, insightful, and thought-provoking
-Brian Christian really fleshes out the central anecdote, his participation as a convince-you-I'm-human "confederate" vs. AI chat-bots at the Loebner Prize (a Turing Test challenge), framing the contest with asides in psychology, philosophy of mind, physics, logic and computing, games, communication, language and linguistics, and other topics that illustrate the complexity of interaction on display here. Broadly insightful and rarely overwrought.
-Author's background in science writing and philosophy plus his MFA in Poetry correspond well to the fluidity with which he moves between tangential topics while keeping sight of the central theme. The book revolves around communication, in particular the written word since text is the format for the Turing Test undertaken, and Brian Christian's well-written prose shows off the fact that he studied and contemplated the topic well in preparation for his Loebner Prize contest and vie for the Most Human Human.
-Topically related to the also recently published book by
James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Julie W. Capell
- 02-07-13
How do you know a human wrote this review?
Any additional comments?
This book really knocked my socks off. Under the guise of telling about his experience as a human competitor in an annual contest to see if computers can fool humans in a text-off, the author covers the evolution of chat-bots, but also dozens of other topics. Page after page dealt with concepts I had never given any thought to, but which were fascinating. Such as: did you know that competitive checkers basically died in the late 1800s when the two top players in the world played the exact same “perfect” game dozens of times in a row? And that the same thing is happening to competitive chess right now? How does your smart phone know what you are going to type before you type it? Do you think all those helpful chatters who appear in popup windows to “answer your questions” while you are shopping on the Internet are real human beings? What is the algorithm for knowing when to interrupt someone in a conversation? All this and much, much more awaits you in this outstanding blend of hard science, philosophy, linguistics and the-future-is-now computer facts. The author does a decent job of narrating his own book, but I believe a professional narrator would have given more life to the performance.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Evan
- 07-27-11
Fun and interesting.
My only snag with it is it pretty much contains the same information that a whole lot of other books written my journalist write. If your looking for this kind of concepts read something by malcolm Gladwell. If you like a good story and and have already gone through the other journalists this is worth the listen.
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- S. Flock
- 02-18-16
Super interesting
I really enjoyed this book, and learned a lot at the same time. It's not like a textbook with unbiased, plain facts, it's put into the context of humanity with many interesting anecdotes.
While I never found myself bored, or not smart enough to understand, I found his tangents that turned into full chapters slightly annoying. While he's in the middle of one thing, he branches off into a side note, or anecdote, and that's fun, but they occasionally drag on for 45 minutes and you completely lose sight of the original message.
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- Daniel
- 03-29-12
What makes us human?
Where does The Most Human Human rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Easily among the best!
What did you like best about this story?
This book made me revisit the philosophical question,
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- Jamie
- 02-03-12
Some very insightful moments!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
This book builds some great insights into both humanity and and computer science. i would defiantly recommend it to anyone with technical interests
What other book might you compare The Most Human Human to and why?
I dont think i have read much that goes along these lines, but it looks like there is plenty out there
What three words best describe Brian Christian’s performance?
animated and articulate but at times a little unclear
Any additional comments?
i think this book says quite a lot for its length compared with many other books, defiantly worthwhile...
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- Charles
- 11-29-11
Too technical
Book made a lot of good points, but just a hair too technical for the average reader.
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- William Meisel
- 02-25-13
More than the title suggests
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Depends on the friend's interests. This book is entertaining, but also thought-provoking.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
This is really a philosophy book with the theme of the Turing competition between humans and computers to appear human as a theme to create some suspense. The thought and research that the author put into what makes us human, and the nature of human discourse is fascinating, but the Turing test is almost a distraction. (I must admit a prejudice. I think the idea of computers emulating humans is a waste of time and discussion, and not a valid direction for research. I published Computer Oriented Approaches to Pattern Recognition in 1972 and The Software Society this month that goes into this further.)
Christian's ideas, independent of the Turing test theme, are interesting and thought-provoking. They are well-written and enthusiastically presented in audio form. It seems today that we must come up with titles that grab a potential readers attention, but a title like "What it means to be a human" describes his focus better. Too bad that more readers aren't simply interested in philosophy and ideas.
What about Brian Christian’s performance did you like?
It seemed like a personal message.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
No one moment I can cite, but the discussion of how we converse, with its subtleties and meaningful pauses, is a subject that I found persuasive and haven't seen elsewhere in general reader sources.
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- Mike
- 04-07-15
Wide-Ranging Yet Highly Cohesive
Super fun read touching on psychology, mathematics, history, etc, with some funny anecdotes to boot.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-20-24
Are you a robot? No!
This is a remarkable book that centers around a short game/conversation between us (humans) and them (our computer creations). But more than that it explores language, philosophy, poetry, art and the very nature of creativity and our wild unpredictability as humans that makes us irreplaceable. One of my very favorites. Read and be encouraged to be the undefinable being you are.
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