Blending hard science and sci-fi, physicist Del Monte (How to Time Travel, 2013, etc.) warns of the implications of strong artificial intelligence machines.
AI is hardly some far-off invention. We are surrounded by smart technology, from phones to bombs; medical innovations are already turning us into human-machine cyborgs; and computing performance doubles every 18 months. At this rate, as scientists such as Ray Kurzweil have predicted, 2029 may mark the tipping point, or singularity, when machines surpass humans in intelligence. Del Monte offers an accessible history and a realistic future trajectory of SAMs. Automata were imagined by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and Frankenstein’s monster is but one early example of literature’s preoccupation with intelligent artificial beings, a trend that also included Isaac Asimov’s robot fiction. In 1956, a Dartmouth conference made AI a valid academic subject, soon funded by the Department of Defense. Although machines lack empathy and cannot solve problems based on experiential learning, “affective computing” attempts to teach computers to recognize human emotion through both subjective (gestures and facial features) and objective (blood flow and skin conductivity) means. Still, questions remain: Will SAMs ever exhibit self-awareness? If so, should they be considered a distinct life form with “machine rights” similar to human rights? Del Monte presents three likely scenarios for the future ethics of human-machine interaction: In the worst case, SAMs will exterminate humanity; in the best case, humans will continue to control machines via computers; in the third scenario, somewhere in between those two extremes, humans and cyborgs will cooperate—and possibly intermarry. The book’s well-structured arguments, glossary and lucid prose make it perfectly suited to laymen. Del Monte’s doommongering can seem overblown in places, though: “Time is short because the singularity is approaching with the stealth and agility of a leopard stalking a lamb.” He also tends to repeat his purpose for writing—i.e., “I am ringing the alarm in this book”—and unnecessarily recapitulates his conclusions after each chapter. Moreover, long quotes from other authors overcrowd the author’s own analysis.
A clearly argued—if sometimes overstated—prophecy about the rise of robots and cyborgs.
Pub Date: April 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-0988171824
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Louis A Del Monte
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
