The Digital Ape: How to Live (in peace) with Smart Machines

The smart machines revolution is re-shaping our lives and our societies. Here, Shadbolt and Hampson - Britain’s pre-eminent authorities on AI - dispel terror, confusion, and misconception by demonstrating that we are not about to be elbowed aside by a rebel army of super-intelligent robots of our own creation. The much-vaunted Transcendence moment is not coming any time soon.

The Digital Ape prefers to talk of Augmented Intelligence (ours) rather than Artificial Intelligence (theirs). It argues that when it comes to our technological future we can retain control, but how we exercise that control - in employment matters, in privacy matters, in political matters etc - is the crux of our collective future well-being.

Lucid, well-informed, and deeply human, The Digital Ape offers a unique approach to the subject of web science and the ethics of intelligent systems.