The Sentient Machine

The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence

By: Amir Husain

Narrated by: Simon Jones

Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

In the tradition of Michio Kaku's The Future of the Mind, acclaimed technologist and inventor Amir Husain answers the universal question of how we can live amid the coming age of sentient machines and artificial intelligence - and not only survive but thrive.

The future is now. Artificial "machine" intelligence is playing an ever-greater role in our society. We are already using cruise control in our cars and automatic checkout at the drugstore and are unable to live without our smartphones. The discussion around AI is largely polarized; people think either machines will solve all problems for everyone or they will lead us down a dark, dystopian path into total human irrelevance. Regardless of what you believe, the idea that we might bring forth intelligent creation can be intrinsically frightening. But what if our greatest role as humans so far is that of creators?

Amir Husain, a brilliant inventor and computer scientist, argues that we are on the cusp of writing our next and greatest creation myth. It is the dawn of a new form of intellectual diversity, one that we need to embrace in order to advance the state of the art in many critical fields, including security, resource management, finance, and energy. In The Sentient Machine, he addresses broad existential questions surrounding the coming of AI: Why are we valuable? What can we create in this world? How are we intelligent? What constitutes progress for us? And how might we fail to progress?

Husain boils down complex computer science and AI concepts into clear, plainspoken language and draws from a wide variety of cultural and historical references to illustrate his points. Ultimately, he challenges many of our societal norms and upends assumptions we hold about "the good life".

©2017 Amir Husain (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Enjoyable overall with good story telling

If a computer can ever just beat a human champion at checkers, then we’ll know they can think. No wait, better make that chess. No, no, we better make that the game of Go. Go needs intuition and only humans have intuition. Oh, never mind. Computers can never think or be self aware because that’s what most people say and the consensus just must always be right! For a mostly consensus defending awful book one can read ‘What do you think about machines that think’ available at Audible, but I really don’t recommend it.

Well this book lays out a contra road map of how it’s currently happening and speculates on why it will happen with certainty and how fool hardy it will be to deny it or try to outlaw it. The future is going to happen regardless of how one wants to control it.

The author is very good at telling stories. As he telling his stories, gems kept popping up. For example, when a doctor doesn’t know how to solve what ails you, they’ll end up doing one of three things: 1) give you a steroid to treat a possible inflammation, 2) give an antibiotic to kill an invader or 3) give a blood thinner like aspirin; another example, in the realm of war ‘amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics’; my last example, in the realm of finance, ‘and that man was John Maynard Keynes’ (I’ll let you read the book to get the whole story, but it involves shorting pesetas).

The author questions our purpose. Why are we here? Is the universe a computer? He answers the first question by quoting Camus. I’ll refute Camus’ myth of Sisyphus by saying we have to learn and discover for ourselves. That is why I am here. Sure, one first needs to meet the daily needs and grind of existence, but after relaxation and needs are met learning is what motivates me.

AI (and ultimately AGI, artificial general intelligence) is one way we’re discovering and improving our world and discovering our meaning for being, and the author gives examples in the medical, security (computer and defense), financial, mind hacking, and other areas of life. Deep learning is real and is happening now. Computer software is teaching itself how to solve goal oriented actions.

The author had read 'Homo Deus' and knows that we create our own reality from the fictions we choose to believe in at the time and that is how AGI can ultimately develop too (our reality is a 'parler de facon').

Every experience we ever have is of a particular instant. We as humans try to make sense of our experiences by going from the specific to the general by using our intuition about the matter of fact. Four different times in different paradigms the author brought this concept up. Firstly (according to the author), Warren Buffett makes his money by feeling the quality of the management team of the company he wants to invest in and not just analytically analyzing financial reports and trends; secondly, he'll say the world is explained by the ‘structured and unstructured’ knowledge we have about the world; thirdly, the author uses Kahneman’s S1 and S2, quick logical thinking and slow feeling thinking. Lastly, in a story related by the author as told by his father the difference between Western thinking and Eastern thinking is analytical verse synthetic story telling. Overall, the author is defending the new age of deep learning ANI (artificial narrow intelligence) with an ability to feel (intuit) as well as logically (analytically) solve complex problems and soon the process will lead to the higher level AGI (artificial general intelligence).

Sometimes the author was out of his depth. Is Goldman Sachs profitable because of its proprietary trading as the author says or because they knew how to get ahead of the trade by a fraction of a second? Were the Russian Bots influential because a crazy racist uncle liked their articles on Facebook for their goofy conspiracy crap such as ‘climate change is a Chinese hoax’ as the author implies or was it because the reality based media printed nonsense stories about an email server almost every other day? There’s no doubt that reality based media has more influence then what the author called ‘mind hackers’ did. It turned out some of our gate keepers such as Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Hallerpin all thought it was acceptable to ‘grab women inappropriately’ and they influenced public opinion and clearly saw women as mostly as objects and are thankfully no longer on my TV. Lastly, can anyone design an experiment such that S1 and S2 can be shown not to be true. If they can’t, then it’s pseudoscience. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily true, but it does mean that it lacks a foundation and should probably not be used as a foundation for other justified true beliefs.

Overall, the book is enjoyable. It doesn’t really break new ground or anything, but the author is a good story teller and this book is better than most AI books.

Very interesting listen.

I enjoy listening to "The Sentient Machine" and Simon Jones does an excellent job with narration. The author spends a lot of time on the philosophy behind his work in AI, but doesn't consider the possibility that a sentient AI may never emerge. He seems to believe that such is inconceivable, I would like to have listen to he's reasoning behind such an assumption. Overall I would recommend this book to any lay person interested in the subject.

Life Changing

Read this book and you will have hope in AI. Easily understood and mind expanding at the same time.

Dull But Good Content

There are a lot of facts about technology but the content is presented in a dull manner. This book is good for someone interested in the field and want to understand the nuances between the different terms (like machine learning versus deep learning). As computer technology advances, terminology changes and distinctions are made. For example, artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) is limited to specific tasks (like a GPS app that can estimate travel time based on day/time of the planned trip). Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a machine performing a task similar to a human being (like Siri answering a question).

Probably one of the best vulgarisation book on AI

I strongly recommend this book to anybody who is looking to learn more about the reality, practicality, opportunities, challenges and ethics of AI. It is not a technical book but most definitely can help most people make an informed opinion on those previously mentioned topics. In short, a great guide to support a critical thinking process as it relates to Artificial Intelligence vs succumbing to public argument and popular movies who play on Fear, Uncertainty and Doubts of people.

Interesting take on Artificial Intelligence

Written by a computer scientist, this book was quite informative, and had a good grounding on how AI will develop in to a Super Intelligence, which is rarely discussed in such a prevailing subject.

It is quite unnerving to think the pursuit of a strong super AI is analogous to the development of weapons with the prisoners dilemma logic, making it an arms race of sorts. The author might be quite right to think Pandora's box has been opened, and there's no going back.

This book is somewhat unique in its acceptance that Super Artificial Intelligence will surpass humans at every level and become sentient, but optimistic in its predictions of a benevolent AI.

A good book with a positive attitude towards what's coming.

Amazing book

This book made my smarter. I am going to read it again immediately. It is unlocking new ideas in my mind as it relates to my interests, strengths and experiences.

So intrigued!

This book covered many of my questions about " where do we go from here?".
I am going to listen again!

Great Overview of Pervasive AI

This book is a love story to coding and its arguably most advanced manifestation - artificial intelligence. Husain spends quite a bit of time explaining what, exactly, AI is and its history, where we currently are, and where we will be in the near future. He then spends considerable time looking at various areas where AI research is already being done and where it is already having an impact. His praise of the idiot John Maynard Keynes is a bit too effusive, and is indicative of how wrong Husain's thinking can be when he leaves the programmatic space. While this is but one concrete example, there are numerous others too that are the basis of the drop of a star. Among these are his praise for National Security Agency spying as well as domestic police spying on every day citizens, disregard of Constitutional freedom protections, labeling anything he disagrees with as a "myth", and a few others. Still, quite a remarkable book when it sticks to its central thesis, and highly recommended.

Specific to the Audible version: Jones' performance was simply amazing. Assuming this is the voice he uses for all of his Audible work, I'm def going to have to see what else he has. He uses a specific form of a British accent, unsure what it is called. Ian McEllan uses the same one when playing Magneto in the original XMen movies.

Bias, dull and uninformative.

i understand that this is the authors life work but he's so incredibly bias on the subject and glances over real concerns