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These Strange New Minds

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Stunning advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini put the knowledge of all the world’s experts at our fingertips, and can generate meaningful sentences, equations and computer code. The march of this new technology is set to upturn our economies, challenge our democracies, and refashion society in unpredictable ways. We can expect these AI systems to soon be making autonomous decisions on the user’s behalf, with transformative impact on everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI systems ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘understand’? Could they manipulate or deceive you, and if so, what might they make you do? Whose interests do they ultimately represent? And when will they be able to move beyond words and take actions for themselves in the real world?

To answer these questions, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explains how these strange new minds work. He charts the evolution of AI, from the earliest inklings about thinking machines in the seventeenth century to today’s gargantuan deep neural networks. The resulting book is the most accessible, up-to-date and authoritative exploration of this radical new technology. Ultimately, armed with an understanding of AI’s mysterious inner workings, we can begin to grapple with the existential question of our age: can we look forward to a technological utopia, or are we in the process of writing ourselves out of history?

‘An engaging, insightful and panoramic survey of where we are, why we got here and what it means. A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times’ Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind

‘As a leading authority in both computational neuroscience and the social impacts of AI, Christopher Summerfield is perfectly situated to explore the meaning and implications of these machines that are so uncannily like – and unlike – ourselves’ Brian Christian, co-author of Algorithms to Live by

‘AI expert Chris Summerfield takes us on a tour of this astonishing new technology, and helps us to understand the issues it raises. You might choose to be alarmed, excited, or indifferent to LLMs, but you should read Chris’s book before you decide’ Mike Woolridge, author of The Road to Conscious Machines

©2024 Christopher Summerfield (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind

By far the best guide to a newly emerging species with which we will share the planet for the foreseeable future

Stuart Russell, author of Human Compatible

As a leading authority in both computational neuroscience and the social impacts of AI, Christopher Summerfield is perfectly situated to explore the meaning and implications of these machines that are so uncannily like – and unlike – ourselves

Brian Christian, co-author of Algorithms to Live by

Summerfield takes us on a tour of this astonishing new technolog – general purpose AI – and helps us to understand the issues it raises. You might choose to be alarmed, excited, or indifferent to large language models but you should read Chris’s book before you decide

Mike Woolridge, author of The Road to Conscious Machines

With clarity, insight and wit, Summerfield dives beneath the ever-breaking wave of large language models to reveal the deeper principles at play, and the challenges and opportunities that these powerful new technologies present. An essential and highly readable guide to thinking abut how, and weather, computers can think, what’s coming next and what we should do about it

Anil Seth, author of Being You

‘A closeup look at the large language models that have radically changed computer technology…a clear-minded, accessible examination of how AI systems work’

Kirkus

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