Showing titles in Future Studies

In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent - really - are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant methods of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought that led to recent achievements.  

In this provocative, utterly original work of 'scientific fiction', Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and best-selling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our world in 2041 and how it will be shaped by AI. In 10 gripping short stories, set 20 years in the future, they introduce listeners to an array of eye-opening 2041 settings.

Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. The legendary oracle of technological change explains how AI will transform our species beyond recognition within two decades. What will it mean to live free from the limits of our bodies? Who will we become if our minds can be stored and...

Now available as an unabridged recording for the first time NATIONAL BESTSELLER Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and...

Brought to you by Penguin. An instant NEW YORK TIMES bestseller ** A Guardian biggest book of the autumn ** AI is the greatest threat to our existence that we have ever faced. The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction – but it’s not too late to change course...

Brought to you by Penguin. Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last. In this groundbreaking book on the biggest question facing humanity, Stuart Russell explains why he has...

Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies. Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees and people aspiring towards the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn't need to see any further than Europe and the US to do well. Printed money was legal tender for all debts. We grew up learning how to 'play the game', and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a family, saw our children grow up and went into retirement with our finances secure. That world - and those rules - are over.

This urgent and eye-opening book makes the case that protecting humanity's future is the central challenge of our time. If all goes well, human history is just beginning. Our species could survive for billions of years - enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways unimaginable today. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, where we face existential catastrophes - those from which we could never come back.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence—“a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next” (The New York Times Book Review). “Kurzweil offers a...

Brought to you by Penguin. Discover how artificial intelligence thinks and reasons, and how we can make the most of their super-human abilities, in the must read new book from the prize-winning technology writer and author of The Dark Net and The People vs Tech. Knowing how to speak to AI –...

'Book of the Year' as chosen by The Conversation 'Disconcerting . . . a disturbing and important book' NEW SCIENTIST 'Smart and wonderfully readable' NEW YORK TIMES The bad science and sinister ideas behind Silicon Valley's foolish obsession with immortality, AI paradise and limitless growth...

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize–winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid...

Brought to you by Penguin. A radical retelling of human history through collapse – from the dawn of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twenty-first century and beyond. ‘A brilliant, utterly convincing account of the evolution of human society and why we are probably...

How would you like to be the center of a massive outpouring of wealth, innovation, success, and prosperity... the force behind a wave of abundance that rolls over your friends, family, and associates? Now you can be! Despite what the pessimists say, we live in an era of exponential growth and abundance. Astonishing new technologies are driving a new world where the unimaginable is being imagined and turned into reality.

According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood.

What will the world look like in 2050? How will complex forces of change—demography, the environment, finance, technology and ideas about governance—affect our global society? And how, with so many unknowns, should we think about the future? One of Europe’s foremost voices on global trends in economics, business and society, Hamish McRae takes us on an exhilarating journey through the next 30 years. Drawing on decades of research, and combining economic judgement with historical perspective, Hamish weighs up the opportunities and dangers we face.

Brought to you by Penguin. What would a fair and equal society actually look like? The world-renowned economist and bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis presents his radical and subversive answer. Imagine it is 2025. Years earlier, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, a global hi-tech...

Brought to you by Penguin. It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn't happening at all, and if your anxiety about it is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of...

The Future of War - which covers civil wars to as yet unknown nuclear conflicts, proxy wars (real) to the Cold War (not), fashionably small wars to the War to End All Wars (it didn't) - is filled with insight and fascinating nuggets of military history and culture from one of the most brilliant military and strategic historians of his generation.