Machine Politics

In Artificial You, Susan Schneider says that it is inevitable that AI will take intelligence in new directions but urges that it is up to us to carve out a sensible path forward. As AI technology turns inward, reshaping the brain, as well as outward, potentially creating machine minds, it is crucial to beware. Homo sapiens, as mind designers, will be playing with "tools" they do not understand how to use: the self, the mind, and consciousness.

Online disinformation stormed our political process in 2016 and has only worsened since. Yet as Samuel Woolley shows in this urgent book, it may pale in comparison to what's to come: humanlike automated voice systems, machine learning, "deepfake" AI-edited videos and images, interactive memes, virtual reality, and more. These technologies have the power not just to manipulate our politics, but to make us doubt our eyes and ears and even feelings. Deeply researched and compellingly written, The Reality Game describes the profound impact these technologies will have on our lives.

In The Fight, Dan Bongino picks up the story where his New York Times best-selling book Life Inside the Bubble ends to tackle current political and security issues and offer new solutions. From Hillary's emails to the security failings at the White House (including the drone crash and the fence jumper); from Charlie Hebdo to Bowe Bergdahl - the author examines how our current administration has allowed our security efforts to lapse both at home and abroad.

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous-in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire. If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent—or more fascinating—than how we harness this technology and for what purpose.

For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.

Brought to you by Penguin. Is this how democracy dies? The Coming Storm is Gabriel Gatehouse’s brilliant exploration of how conspiracy theories are tearing America apart. It’s a story that takes you down a rabbit hole - one that both the US as a nation and he as a journalist fell through -...

Everywhere we turn, a new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services, and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We're told that innovations - from augmented - reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars - will make life easier, more convenient, and more productive.

En los últimos años China se ha convertido en una verdadera superpotencia de la IA y el único verdadero contrapeso nacional a Estados Unidos en esta tecnología emergente. Por ello, la forma en que estos dos países decidan competir y cooperar podría llegar a tener consecuencias dramáticas para la economía y la gobernabilidad mundial.

Over his 50-year career in Washington, Joe Biden has become known for his wild dishonesty, embarrassing policy failings, and an absolute lack of accountability, culminating in his predictably unpopular presidency. But what has not yet been revealed is the vast web of consultants, bureaucrats, corporate titans, foreign interests, and various extended family members (it’s not just Hunter!) who have achieved unfathomable wealth and power while keeping Biden in charge.

James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.

As AI becomes smarter and more humanlike, our societies, our economies, and our humanity will undergo the most dramatic changes we've seen since the Agricultural Revolution. Some of these changes will enhance our species. Others may dehumanize us and make us more machinelike in our interactions with others. It's up to us to adapt and determine how we want to live and work. Are you ready? In I, Human psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic offers a guide for reclaiming ourselves in a world in which most of our decisions will be made for us.

Today, there are over 100 nuclear reactors operating in our backyards, from Indian Point in New York to Diablo Canyon in California. Proponents claim that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels, and due to rising energy consumption and the looming threat of global warming, they are pushing for an even greater investment.

Soul Machine takes us back to the origins of modernity, a time when a crisis in religious authority and the scientific revolution led to searching questions about the nature of human inner life. This is the story of how a new concept - the mind - emerged as a potential solution, one that was part soul and part machine but fully neither.

In the last decades, America has gone to war as supposed defenders of democracy. The War on Terror was waged to protect the West from the dangers of Islamists. US soldiers are stationed in more than 800 locations across the world to act as the righteous arbiters of the rule of law. In this book, Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the intentions behind Washington's martial appetites.

Uncover everything you need to know about "deepfakes" and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention, more than 2,500 years ago. In this groundbreaking account of the earliest expressions of the timeless impulse to create artificial life, Adrienne Mayor tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices, and human enhancements - and how these visions relate to and reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines.

Artem Chapeye reveals his war, intimate and senseless, withholding nothing about his motivations, his nightmares, his new relationship with the world. Here one man, a pacifist turned fighter, a story writer turned soldier considers the reasons for and reactions to war on a very personal level. Chapeye investigates his role in the Ukrainian people's defense against the Russian army and his responsibilities as a father, a writer, a soldier, and a man of conviction.

Un CV imaginaire, une fausse identité, et un crâne rasé... "Steak Machine" est le récit d'une infiltration de quarante jours dans un abattoir industriel. Dans ce reportage glaçant, le journaliste Geoffrey Le Guilcher partage et raconte le quotidien des ouvriers : les giclées de sang dans les yeux, les doigts qui se bloquent et les défonces nocturnes. Car dans une usine qui abat deux millions d'animaux par an, le traitement indigne réservé aux bêtes s'accompagne toujours d'une violence exercée sur les hommes.

Someone wanted to overthrow the government of San Sebastian, a country whose tiny army, nonaligned status, and location on the deadly curve of Central America made it ripe for subversion. The first try was an attempted hit on its president on a crowded street in Washington. The second was an invasion from the sea. Both times the Black Berets were there to keep the worst from happening. But how long could five men and one boy hold out against an army of the world’s most skilled assassins? An army with limitless resources—and the patience to keep on killing?

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?