Talking to Robots : How Humans and Machines Will Live Together in the Future

'If you want to see what that future might look like, Duncan's book is a fun place to start' NPR 'Intensely readable, downright terrifying, and surprisingly uplifting' Vanity Fair '5 books not to miss . . . A fascinating work of imaginative futurology' USA Today One of Time magazine's '32 Books You Need to Read This Summer' - 'a riveting read' One of David Baldacci and Elizabeth Acevedo's best summer reads, on USA Today's Today programme 'A refreshing variation on the will-intelligent-robots-bring-Armageddon genre . . . this colourful mixture of expert futurology and quirky speculation does not disappoint' Kirkus Reviews What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate about our human-robot future? For even as robots and AI intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology - it's also about what robots tell us about being human. From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that swiped my job' bots, bestselling American popular science writer David Ewing Duncan's Talking to Robots is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined. Featured bots include robot drivers; doc bots; politician bots; warrior bots; sex bots; synthetic bio bots; dystopic bots that are hopefully just bad dreams; and ultimately, God Bot (as described by physicist Brian Greene). These scenarios are informed by discussions with well-known thinkers, engineers, scientists, artists, philosophers and others, who share with us their ideas, hopes and fears about robots. David spoke with, among others, Kevin K