Technology

What if we are victims of an AI's singularity?

Creating superintellingence may be inevitable, unless we are already living in a simulation. A collection of AI essays grapples with this weighty issue

By Bruce Sterling

9 November 2016

AI 1 — I think, too: a conscious AI is not some evolved program but a genuine competitor of humankind (above and below)
Emile Loreaux/Picturetank

THIS is certainly the best book about the singularity. It features 26 intelligent scholars from 11 widely varying disciplines, all of them valiantly grappling with ghosts.

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Given that the subject matter is so highly speculative, so lofty, so indefinable, this tome is heavy going. Among its talents are nine philosophers and nine artificial intelligence researchers. These worthies mercilessly lay it on with their specialised jargon. It takes a sturdy, dedicated reader to plough those thickets of prose.

Worse…