Possible Minds
Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
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Possible Minds
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Narrated by:
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Kathleen McInerney
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Will Damron
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Jason Culp
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Rob Shapiro
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Vikas Adam
About this listen
Science-world luminary John Brockman assembles 25 of the most important scientific minds, people who have been thinking about the field of artificial intelligence for most of their careers, for an unparalleled roundtable examination about mind, thinking, intelligence, and what it means to be human.
"Artificial intelligence is today's story - the story behind all other stories. It is the Second Coming and the Apocalypse at the same time: Good AI versus evil AI." (John Brockman)
More than 60 years ago, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener published a book on the place of machines in society that ended with a warning: "We shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions.... The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door." In the wake of advances in unsupervised, self-improving machine learning, a small but influential community of thinkers is considering Wiener's words again. In Possible Minds, John Brockman gathers their disparate visions of where AI might be taking us.
The fruit of the long history of Brockman's profound engagement with the most important scientific minds who have been thinking about AI - from Alison Gopnik and David Deutsch to Frank Wilczek and Stephen Wolfram - Possible Minds is an ideal introduction to the landscape of crucial issues AI presents. The collision between opposing perspectives is salutary and exhilarating; some of these figures, such as computer scientist Stuart Russell, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, and physicist Max Tegmark, are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others, notably robotics entrepreneur Rodney Brooks, philosopher Daniel Dennett, and best-selling author Steven Pinker, have a very different view. Serious, searching, and authoritative, Possible Minds lays out the intellectual landscape of one of the most important topics of our time.
Read by Jason Culp, Rob Shapiro, Vikas Adam, Will Damron, and Kathleen McInerney.
©2019 John Brockman (P)2019 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
“Pithy essays on artificial intelligence.... Readers...will not find a better introduction than this book.” (Kirkus)
“While the [Possible Minds] authors disagree on the answers, they agree on the major question: what dangers might AI present to humankind? Within that framework, the essays offer a host of novel ideas.... Enlightening, entertaining, and exciting reading.” (Publishers Weekly)
What listeners say about Possible Minds
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Montberte
- 13-06-19
A Little Repetitive with a few Good Sections
I have so enjoyed all the other John Brockman collections and was really looking forward to this one. But for me the constant reference to Norbert Wiener “The Human Use of Human Beings”, whilst a good idea for cohesion just led to to much repetition blinding the good contributors from extending to more current developments. So I found this book the least informative of the excellent other offerings having just completed Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction which I found more informative and less historical. Yes a few sections are excellent, but others are more of a history lesson. Just my opinion, but an honest one.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- M Hand
- 06-10-24
Mostly excellent and even the weaker aspects are really useful to think about.
Most of this is an excellent set of varied assessments. I'd be wary of chapter 11 though, because the author makes some fundamentally wrong assumptions about humanity's ability to innovate and adapt before agriculture. The book Against the Grain is a good introduction as to why we should not assume lack of either of those things simply because stone artefacts changed slowly. An unconsious colonial mindset about other ways of life can be hard to shake, and I don't pretend to have managed it myself either, but it's problematic at the least to say that people were not fully human before taxable agriculture, which seems to be the chapter's premise.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dr David M Symons
- 16-07-20
Fascinating!
Every intellectual must read this fascinating book and share it with her/his family and friends.
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