Our Final Invention

‘I wish it was science fiction, but I know it’s not.’ Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype

‘If you read just one book that makes you confront scary high-tech realities that we’ll soon have no choice but to address, make it this one.’ Washington Post

Corporations and government agencies around the world have for years been pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail – human-level intelligence. But once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine.

First published ten years ago, Our Final Invention predicted much of the artificial ‘intelligence explosion’ that is now ripping through our culture, and was named by Elon Musk as one of five books everyone should read about the future. Now with an urgent new preface, James Barrat’s landmark work explores the ethics, history and future perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?