Surviving AI: The promise and peril of Artificial Intelligence

surviving ai calum chace

Review of Surviving AI by Calum Chace

The following is a detailed review of the book Surviving AI by Calum Chace.

Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence, is a book by Calum Chace (Twitter account over here) that gives an exhausting overview of many of the hot topics of today’s Artificial Intelligence ecosystem, and covers the topic of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Super-Intelligence in depth.

While it has a more general approach to AI than SuperIntelligence by Nick Bostrom, talking about a wider variety of topics, it does provide a very clear and detailed explanation of Artificial Super-Intelligence that can be understood by the general public and people with no technical background.

The book is concise, but packs a great deal of information: it explains general concepts of computing like Moore’s Law, explores different technologies like IoT, Virtual and Augmented reality, and a lot more. Its main focus, is however, Artificial Intelligence or AI: and in this field it leaves no stone unturned.

It covers the state of the art of Artificial Intelligence, what it is capable of, and some of its most amazing achievements. It breaks down AI research by continents and details the evolution of the perspective on AI of the main technological companies: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon… while also giving a delightful account of the History of Artificial Intelligence from the Turing test to today.

It cites pretty much all the experts of today’s AI: Andrew Ng, Yan LeCun, Geof Hinton, and a lot more, introducing their opinions on various topics, the reach of AI and the possible creation of an Artificial Super-Intelligence.

The core of the book explains the concept of Singularity, debates when it will come, and goes on to speak about Artificial General Intelligence, and Super-Intelligence: what they are, when they will arrive, their dangers, their benefits and the risks.

Will a generation of machines which exceed our human intelligence by various orders of magnitude be our saviour or our demise? Read on to learn more about it and make your own opinion!

About the book

Author: Calum Chace

Length: 247 pages of content and about 20 pages of references, links and articles to all the material mentioned in the book

First Publication: 2015

Second Publication: 2018

Surviving AI book review

Summary

Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence presents an amazing overview of the field of AI, clears all the mystery around it, and goes on to explore the debate about what will happen to humanity as AI keeps evolving and becoming more and more intelligent.

It is an excellent little book both for those with no experience in the field of AI, to whom it will serve as an introduction, and to those who are already familiar with it, to whom it will serve as a tool to visualise where we are going with all this, and as a call for awareness.

We hope you liked our review of Surviving AI, and that we have convinced you to check it out. Have a good read!

You can find the book on Amazon here:

Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence
  • Chace, Calum (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 303 Pages - 07/29/2015 (Publication Date) - Three Cs (Publisher)

For more Artificial Intelligence books like this one, check out our section on Artificial Intelligence Books.

Thank you very much for reading How to Learn Machine Learning, and have a wonderful day!

Quotes about the book

A marvellously accesible guide – clear and jargon freeDavid Wood, chair, London Futurists

A sober and easy-to-read review of the risks and opportunities that humanity will face from AI” Jaan Tallin, co-founder of Skype

“Identifies the most essential issues and develops them with insight and wit” Kenneth Cukier, co-author, of Big Data

‘Surviving AI’ is an exceptionally clear, well-researched and balanced introduction to a complex and controversial topic, and is a compelling read to boot. Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, executive director (2015), Cambridge Centre for the Study of Environmental Risk

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