The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy

'A fascinating and delightfully written book about some very smart people who may not, or may, be about to transform humanity forever' JON RONSON 'The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made of atoms which it can use for something else' This is a book about AI and AI risk. But it's also more importantly about a community of people who are trying to think rationally about intelligence, and the places that these thoughts are taking them, and what insight they can and can't give us about the future of the human race over the next few years. It explains why these people are worried, why they might be right, and why they might be wrong. It isn't, on the other hand, a book about the future - it doesn't try to guess how many of us are going to be put out of work by AI, or what the operating system in your house might be able to do ten years hence. Instead, this is a book about the cutting edge of our thinking on intelligence and rationality right now by the people who stay up all night worrying about it. Along the way, we discover why we probably don't need to worry about a future AI resurrecting a perfect copy of our minds and torturing us for not inventing it sooner but we should be concerned about paperclips destroying life as we know it; how Mickey Mouse can teach us an important lesson about how to programme AI; and why Spock is not as logical as we think he is. (p) Orion Publishing Group Ltd 2019