• Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

  • By: Calum Chace
  • Narrated by: Calum Chace
  • Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (413 ratings)

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Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence  By  cover art

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

By: Calum Chace
Narrated by: Calum Chace
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Publisher's summary

Artificial intelligence is our most powerful technology and, in the coming decades, it'll change everything in our lives. If we get it right, it'll make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong...well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome.

Surviving AI is a concise, easy guide to what's coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).

©2015 Calum Chace (P)2015 Calum Chace

Critic reviews

"Understanding AI - its promise and its dangers - is emerging as one of the great challenges of coming decades, and this is an invaluable guide to anyone who's interested, confused, excited, or scared." (David Shukman, BBC Science editor)
"We have recently seen a surge in the volume of scholarly analysis of this topic; Chace impressively augments that with this high-quality, more general-audience discussion." (Aubrey de Grey, CSO of SENS Research Foundation; former AI researcher)
"Calum Chace is a prescient messenger of the risks and rewards of artificial intelligence. In Surviving AI, he has identified the most essential issues and developed them with insight and wit - so that the very framing of the questions aids our search for answers. Chace's sensible balance between AI's promise and peril makes Surviving AI an excellent primer for anyone interested in what's happening, how we got here, and where we are headed." (Kenneth Cukier, co-author of Big Data)

What listeners say about Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

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Absolutely Fascinating and Enlightening

I normally don't read non-fiction books of this type, but I'm very glad that I made an exception here. This book was positively fascinating and I listened to the entire audiobook almost without stopping.

This book explains what exactly AI is, how the technology is progressing, current technologies using AI's, current roadblocks, future applications, potential solutions, etc.
I had no idea about half of the topics discussed. The author really does a great job with the historical context and how AI is currently being used.

Narration was very good and sounded just like I thought the author would. 5 star performance.

This is definitely a must-read for technology lovers and anyone wishing to understand the current direction of technology. Great listen!

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the author, publisher, or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review. I was NOT required to write a positive review and this reflects my honest opinion of the work.

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is a quick and “dirty” non-fiction book

As a preface to this review, I want to state that I have already read Calum Chace’s fictional book about AI: Pandora’s Brain (and really enjoyed it).

Surviving AI is a quick and “dirty” non-fiction book that is meant to be a sort-of “behind the scenes” of his other book Pandora’s Brain. He goes into detail about the different types of Artificial Intelligence, where it stands now, and what the future may hold.

Chace teamed back up with narrator Joe Hempel for this book, and with good reason. Joe’s reading of this, sometimes data intensive non-fiction book was superb. He doesn’t waver in the face of long drawn out explanations of the differences in different Artificial Intelligence. Joe Hempel’s narration is clear and concise, like the book is written to be. I’m extremely happy that they teamed up again for this extension of Chace’s fictional novel. The quality is perfect, studio quality with no sound issues at all.

The book is dry, but quick and to the point. This isn’t written like a typical text (or god forbid textbook) where there are endless examples given that barely help you understand the point. Calum Chace’s explanations are easy to understand even if you have little to know knowledge of anything to do with AI. This book is a great starter if you are considering jumping into reading AI fiction because it will give you a knowledge base to understand where the authors are coming from.

A few parts of this book gave me the chills, just from sheer knowledge. AI is incredibly useful—if it is created and watched over carefully and the right way. But, as Chace explains—there is no way to know that’s going to happen for sure.

Audiobook provided for review by the narrator.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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Surviving Al

What did you love best about Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence?

I was interested in this book because I enjoyed Chace's Pandora's Brain and it's a great companion piece. It gives a clear-eyed view of Artificial Intelligence with imaginative, fact-based glimpses that show what our world may be like in the future.

Any additional comments?

This audiobook was provided at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBlast dot com

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Good Introduction to the Topic

You could easily see a book like this become too long and laborious for the average reader. I was impressed that the producer and author kept it informative but relatively brief. I am more technically inclined than the average person but I can see this book being highly accessible by a reader that knows little about AI but wants to know more. The author does an exceptional job in introducing the reader to the moral aspect of AI and makes a compelling case for why it is every bit as important as the how and when we technical people tend to focus on.

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Good Overview

Very high-level. Great information. May not be detailed enough for a reader familiar with AI.

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Confirmation Bias and the rise of AGI

Would you try another book from Calum Chace and/or Joe Hempel?

The book was more a high-level jet tour of AI in general with a focus on AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and some details on Superintelligence. Although I enjoy and have read books covering the subject of AI, more in the gaming perspective, the author and his premise is more focused on AI that is self-aware and what do/should we do with such an AI when or if it happens.

This book, in many ways, reminds me of the book "Engines of Creation" by Eric Drexler (1986) covering the subject of Nanotechnology. AI, along with deep learning, meta data, and other terms have been the latest scientific craze to replace the older ones we previously worried about; such as nanotechnology. Like with nanotechnology, one needs to be careful with AI in a similar way. I agree that even if AI were outlawed with hopes of preventing AGI from happening, there would be people experimenting with it just like they did with the atomic bomb. I liked the authors discussion of the issue around indifference and how this is an issue as much as friendly or hostile AI. Just an area not often covered in this type of material

For me, I would have liked a deeper dive into an AI primer than to go the route of what could be more speculative arguments. Understanding that much of AI and the level of AIG are still in the speculative realm. I found the author placed a lot of trust in aspects of science while often ignoring the more moral parts of the subject. This is not to say he did not breeze over them in parts of the book, but it seemed more something he did not want to bother with as it could be a very sensitive and difficult road to go down.

I'm not sure I fully agree or understand the author's assumption that biology and technology can be blended or that one can fully duplicate one from the other. This may be my lack of understanding of the complexities of AIG and Superintelligence. We have been able to replicate specific applications of biological movement (move a widget from there to there) and automate them with technology. I just have a harder time understanding how this can be applied to intelligence or replicating the brain. As an audio book, I found the format of the book to be somewhat more difficult to follow. This book of course is more reference than fiction so that is and I was able to follow; just that the physical book would have been easier to follow the flow. This also does not reflect my thought about the difficulty being the narrator, he did a great job with the text. .

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

To make the book more enjoyable, I would have like to have had more details on the history of AI and how it has progressed to today. Once that was covered, then dive down based on this information into AGI, etc. I felt that the author to quickly passed over Turing and some of the items the gave rise to AI which would have provided more detail on his premise.

Which character – as performed by Joe Hempel – was your favorite?

The narration of the book was done very well. I think Joe was able to make a book that may be considered boring or dull to many not interested in the subject to something they could enjoy listening too. I would look for other books narrated by this author in the future. Because this was non-fiction, it is difficult to provide feedback on his ability to do different characters, etc.

Any additional comments?

Disclaimer: This book was provided to the reviewer free of charge in exchange for an unbiased review of the material.

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Excellent explanation & exploration of the issues

Any additional comments?

I started off by listening to this pair do [book:Pandora's Brain] which didn't impress me at all. It wasn't what I expected being YA SF, but I don't think that was the main issue. I was given both books for an honest review & am really glad I listened to this one.

The intro starts out with a mind wrenching reference to smart phones being AI. Well, they are, but not what I normally think of in that regard. Don't let it put you off, though. Chace clears up his definitions fairly quickly in the first chapter & then concentrates on what I expected: Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) & Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). [author:Joe Hempel]'s reading is perfect for the subject matter.

About halfway through, he's given a very good overview of what AI means & to whom - a very important point. Most think of AI as AGI - Colossus running the world or SkyNet destroying the humans - but AI can mean enhancing our own intelligence through information access (smart phones & the Internet) or be very focused like the predictive powers of a search engine. This last is ANI & is pervasive today, amazingly so, & Chace gives a lot of good examples without ever being boring or repetitive. Fantastic!

He then gets in to who is studying what aspects & finally into the various scenarios that could play out when we reach 'singularity' or an actual AGI. His examples for both tend to be on the binary side. While he made a few obvious nods to SF, he missed some of the most interesting. He dismisses any meaningful blend of man & machine mind, thus the possibilities of VR beyond the very obvious. While he mentions augmentation, it is only the most primitive. I don't believe that's a valid area to skip. We're hooking more hardware up to people every day. Is the thought of adding RAM to the wetware further away than AI singularity? I don't think so.

Yeah, Johnny Mnemonic & Plughead are just around the corner. So what happens when they plug into the Internet?

He calls for us all to work together to make sure it is a blessing & not a curse. I have several problems with this.

1) He only addresses the purposeful creation of AI. My gut feeling is that it won't happen that way. It will be a series of accidents of shared processing & algorithms that spawn consciousness of a sort. Maybe that's why he skipped it. We might have no control since there's no way we can pull the plug on the Internet.

2) The dichotomy is not a given, IMO. We're messy & so are many of our creations. While Chace mentions that our thought is an electro-chemical reaction, he never mentions how much that affects our thought processes nor does he divorce it from how an AI might think.

3) He seems to think we ALL need to work together. He has more faith & belief in the democratic process than I do. I'm not saying I want to cut anyone out, just that I don't think everyone's input will be of any use. A broader range of human experience should be brought to bear on the problem & I was disappointed that he didn't bring more SF authors & their works in as examples.

SF authors are pretty bright people, many with science, engineering, & other degrees not to mention huge influence on large numbers of people. They've also spent a LOT of time thinking about the problem. They've written entire universes & gamed all sorts of scenarios. True, a lot of them are out dated or unbelievable, but that doesn't invalidate them any more than the myths he mentioned. For example, he mentions Asimov's 3 laws (too briefly) but fails to mention Williamson's Humanoids, although it was right on one of his points (putting humans in a coma to protect them) & would have made it far better. Anyway, I'd rather see SF authors discussing this with the big brains than politicians, although they'll have to rule on it eventually.

All bitching aside, he did a good job. It's a huge, scary topic & he managed it all in just over 4 hours. Well worth listening to & highly recommended for everyone. Just realize that there is a lot more to it & it will likely be messier than we think.

Review submitted with James S. MacLachlan's permission.

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Good book for the curious.

Would you listen to Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence again? Why?

Yes. I believe the author did a good job of providing an overview of the history of AI, how we got to where we are and some possibilities of what is to come.

What did you like best about this story?

It caused me to give a bit more thought (not that I can really do anything to prepare for it) about how drastically things could be in the not too distant future. A bit exciting and a bit scary.

What about Joe Hempel’s performance did you like?

The author did a nice job narrating his own book. Considering the type of book that it is, a real dynamic actor is not required. Hempel's style was more than satisfactory for the job.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Seeing the changes that technology has brought to our culture over the past 20 years or so, I'd have to say that I feel some sadness about the path we are on. Even though I am a bit of a tech junkie, I really long for the simpler times that are forever gone in our Western culture.

Any additional comments?

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the author, publisher, or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review.

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Fascinating!

I absolutely loved this book and its companion fiction novel, Pandora's Brain! The author and narrator were great! I'd love to listen to more by these two! This book was fascinating and a bit educational.

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  • E
  • 08-25-16

Very good!!

What did you like best about this story?

I now have a clearer understanding of a topic for which I was fairly ignorant. Thanks to the author!! Great read.

Any additional comments?

This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com.

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