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Possible Minds  By  cover art

Possible Minds

By: John Brockman - editor
Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney,Will Damron,Jason Culp,Rob Shapiro,Vikas Adam
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Publisher's summary

Science-world luminary John Brockman assembles 25 of the most important scientific minds, people who have been thinking about the field of artificial intelligence for most of their careers, for an unparalleled roundtable examination about mind, thinking, intelligence, and what it means to be human.

"Artificial intelligence is today's story - the story behind all other stories. It is the Second Coming and the Apocalypse at the same time: Good AI versus evil AI." (John Brockman)

More than 60 years ago, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener published a book on the place of machines in society that ended with a warning: "We shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions.... The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door." In the wake of advances in unsupervised, self-improving machine learning, a small but influential community of thinkers is considering Wiener's words again. In Possible Minds, John Brockman gathers their disparate visions of where AI might be taking us.

The fruit of the long history of Brockman's profound engagement with the most important scientific minds who have been thinking about AI - from Alison Gopnik and David Deutsch to Frank Wilczek and Stephen Wolfram - Possible Minds is an ideal introduction to the landscape of crucial issues AI presents. The collision between opposing perspectives is salutary and exhilarating; some of these figures, such as computer scientist Stuart Russell, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, and physicist Max Tegmark, are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others, notably robotics entrepreneur Rodney Brooks, philosopher Daniel Dennett, and best-selling author Steven Pinker, have a very different view. Serious, searching, and authoritative, Possible Minds lays out the intellectual landscape of one of the most important topics of our time.

Read by Jason Culp, Rob Shapiro, Vikas Adam, Will Damron, and Kathleen McInerney.

©2019 John Brockman (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Pithy essays on artificial intelligence.... Readers...will not find a better introduction than this book.” (Kirkus)

“While the [Possible Minds] authors disagree on the answers, they agree on the major question: what dangers might AI present to humankind? Within that framework, the essays offer a host of novel ideas.... Enlightening, entertaining, and exciting reading.” (Publishers Weekly)

“A fascinating map of AI’s likely future and an overview of the difficult choices that will shape it.... A sense of respect for the human mind and humility about its limitations runs through the essays in Possible Minds.” (Foreign Affairs)

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The worst book purchase I’ve made in a long while

I got through 2 hours of it and couldn’t continue. How could so many people (big names with fancy titles too) manage to consistently say so little content with so many words?
Do not get this book if you’re looking to learn something from books.

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22 people found this helpful

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Don't do it

wow this book is bad. chapter one was like a torture fest. most of the other chapters were hardly any better. the voice acting in this was very hard to listen to, one of the ladies sounded like a robot. I don't know if she is doing that on purpose to be ironic or what was going on but it was horrible. I will be returning this book and looking for something else. oh and going back to chapter 1 do you want to talk about a bunch of people that like to sniff their own farts. Apparently all these super important artists from the 1970s New York art scene were really super duper important in this AI stuff yeah of course none of them ever did a damn thing about it, maybe they just talked about it, but who cares. Chapter 1, if you can get past it, you're a hell of a lot better than I am.

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13 people found this helpful

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Beautiful book for all types of people!!

Absolutely stunning story. This is the first time I've actually rated a book before I've even finished it. I plan on buying a paper copy of this book soon!

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7 people found this helpful

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Half of these authors are completely wrong

but the question is: which half?
The book is a little repetitive and a little unfocused.

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7 people found this helpful

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Very limited information.

The book lacks information and limits itself to portray a gloomy view of the dangers of AI.

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6 people found this helpful

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Semantic arguments about a technical topic

This book (at least the part I read) really only says told are dangerous. AI is a tool, it's not sentient, it's a self correcting statistical fitting function, nothing more... yet. And when AI do become "sentient" they will be as trustworthy as any other human being. So 25 essays saying tools are dangerous and you should be careful is useless. None of the authors suggested ways to make AI "safer", they just wanted to yell for a while.

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5 people found this helpful

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Outstanding Anthology on the present/future AI!

Great read for those interested in the latest developments and future scenarios of AI development. It seems that conversation is only beginning since we're at the important historical juncture right now. This book presents 25 distinct voices in the AI community. If you've read it, you might want to continue on your path of discovery of possibilities and pondering on the future AI scenarios. My own newly-released The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution would be such a "sequel." That would be the "26th way" of looking at AI. After all, AI is a new "I."

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4 people found this helpful

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Wonderful insights from ingenious minds

Everything in this work aims to inspire, inform, or educate. There's a perspective shared here for everyone.

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4 people found this helpful

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One of the great books about AI!

After listening to Max Tegmark's book, I thought this one would be interesting too nad I was right. Very very good.

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Not what I expected

I expected to learn something, but got a summary of conferences attended with a fair bit if name dropping. Not sure what the author/publisher’s intent was, but for some reason I was under the impression this would add to my knowledge of AI, but what I read didn’t. After the first couple if chapters I didn’t have the time to invest to see if it changed and I put it down.

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3 people found this helpful