These Strange New Minds
How AI Learned to Talk and What It MeansSelect a format:
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Thanks to recent advances in AI, humans have entered a world where we are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge. A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us - and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?
To answer these questions, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield charts the evolution of AI, from its earliest origins in the seventeenth century to today’s Large Language Models, new tools that put the knowledge of all the world’s experts at your fingertips. The resulting book is the most accessible, up-to-date and authoritative exploration of this radical new technology. Ultimately, armed with an understanding of AI’s mysterious inner workings, we can begin to grapple with the existential question of our age: have we written ourselves out of history or is a technological utopia ahead?
©2024 Christopher Summerfield (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Thanks to recent advances in AI, humans have entered a world where we are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge. A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us - and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?
To answer these questions, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield charts the evolution of AI, from its earliest origins in the seventeenth century to today’s Large Language Models, new tools that put the knowledge of all the world’s experts at your fingertips. The resulting book is the most accessible, up-to-date and authoritative exploration of this radical new technology. Ultimately, armed with an understanding of AI’s mysterious inner workings, we can begin to grapple with the existential question of our age: have we written ourselves out of history or is a technological utopia ahead?
©2024 Christopher Summerfield (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Reviews
An engaging, insightful and panoramic survey of where we are, why we got here and what it means. A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind