Mind Machines

At 35, Mike Cohen lives the American dream. With billions in the bank and his own venture capital firm, he's succeeded beyond his Russian immigrant mother's wildest hopes. The only problem? A car accident that leaves Mike's mother with memory problems. Brainocytes, a new technology developed by one of Mike's portfolio companies, may be the answer to his mother's injury - and offer applications that push the limits of the human mind. Only Mike isn't the only one who sees its potential.

From a New York Times investigative reporter, this “authoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social media” (New York Times Book Review) tracks the high-stakes inside story of how Big Tech’s breakneck race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs fractured the world, and is “an essential book for our times” (Ezra Klein).

When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.

For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?

In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. The book's central concern is what philosophers call the "mind-body problem". Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness.

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain-computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world’s problems.

In this accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative examination of the world’s most radical technology, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores what it really takes to build a brain from scratch. We have entered a world in which disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us—and are beginning to transform everything we do. But can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

A new way of thinking that improves how we work, create and live, empowering listeners to outsmart AI—a tool that can never do what humans do.

AI is at the forefront of everyone's minds: from students and artists, to CEO's and service workers. But what exactly is AI, and how does it influence our everyday lives? And more than that, what does it mean for our future? Is there a way for us to retain our "humanness" in a world ever-reliant on tech? This groundbreaking book argues that the key technology we use to make strategic, political, and ethical decisions is flawed.

Humanity is racing to create machine intelligence vastly smarter than the human brain. We will succeed. Blending accessible philosophy with the latest in AI developments, Mind Crime: The Moral Frontier of Artificial Intelligence forces listeners to grapple with the moral questions we can no longer afford to ignore. Are we prepared for the consequences of artificial superintelligence? Will humanity's survival be threatened, perhaps within years? Is digital consciousness possible? Are we sleepwalking into horrific moral catastrophe?

In the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) just beginning, where machines can ponder the most profound philosophical queries and offer insights born from vast troves of knowledge, AI will become a partner in our quest for understanding, a tool that amplifies our capacity for exploration and discovery. We stand at the cusp of revolutionary new breakthroughs in every field, as well as a point where we must be cautious of the dangers that AI poses to our future.

This audiobook explains how augmenting humans, combining human intuition, and artificial intelligence, will herald an unprecedented era of productivity and financial success. The coming wave of human centered AI will help us solve the biggest problems facing humanity while also protecting us from rogue or weaponized AI systems.

In You Mind?, Richard Arsenault takes listeners on an extraordinary exploration into the future of human consciousness, where artificial intelligence, brain-machine interfaces, and cloud-based minds are reshaping our very existence. Blending deeply personal reflections with cutting-edge science, philosophy, and technology, this book asks profound questions about identity, mortality, and the boundaries of human potential.

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.

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.

The fruit of the long history of John 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 are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others have a very different view.

Leading neuroscience researchers are racing to unlock the secrets of the mind. On the cusp of decoding brain signals that govern motor skills, they are developing miraculous technologies to enable paraplegics and wounded soldiers to move prosthetic limbs, and the rest of us to manipulate computers and other objects through thought alone. These fiercely competitive scientists are vying for Defense Department and venture capital funding, prestige, and great wealth.

As advances in AI spark fear and confusion, The Mind’s Mirror reminds us that in spite of the very real and pressing challenges, AI is a force with enormous potential to improve human life. Computer scientist and AI researcher Daniela Rus, along with science writer Gregory Mone, offers an expert perspective as a leader in the field who has witnessed many technological hype cycles. Rus and Mone illustrate the ways in which AI can help us become more productive, knowledgeable, creative, insightful, and even empathetic, as well as the many risks associated with misuse.

We are all gloriously dysfunctional because we’re wielding the most powerful machine on the planet (the human mind), and no one taught us how to use it. That stops today! With The Human Mind Owner’s Manual that you never knew existed. This book is a simple-to-use REBT and CBT toolbox and workbook for adults and is also great for life coaching.

Science fiction often takes its inspiration from the latest science . . . and our oldest questions. After all, the two are inextricably linked. At a time when advances in artificial intelligence are genuinely leading us closer to a computer that thinks like a human, we can’t help but wonder: What makes a person a person? Countless writers and filmmakers have created futuristic scenarios to explore this issue and others like it. But these scenarios may not be so futuristic after all.