Just completed this excellent book by Byron Reese about how we got to thinking about 'artificial Intelligence', and were it can go. Here is their overview:
'Stories, Dice and Rocks That Think'. Book by Byron Reese
This fascinating tale explores the three leaps in human history that made us what we are today-and will change how you think about our future.
Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas?
In Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think, Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in.
Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, and predict- -and eventually master--the future.
Thoughtful, witty, and compulsively readable, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think unravels our history as an intelligent species in three acts:
Act I (Stories): Ancient humans undergo "the awakening," developing the cognitive ability to mentally time-travel and share knowledge using language.
Act II (Dice): In 17th century France, the mathematical framework known as "probability theory" is born--a science for seeing into the future that we used to build the modern world.
Act III (Rocks That Think): Beginning with the invention of the computer chip, humanity creates machines to model the future with even more precision, and overcome the limits of our brains.
A fresh new look at the history and destiny of humanity, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think will give readers a new understanding of what they are- not just another animal, but a creature with a mastery of time itself. ...
(Available in all the usual places)
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