Calum Chace has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 3 ratings. The most-rated is Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence.
Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence
Summary
Artificial intelligence is our most powerful technology and, in the coming decades, it'll change everything in our lives. If we get it right, it'll make humans almost godlike. If we get it wrong...well, extinction is not the worst possible outcome. Surviving AI is a concise, easy guide to what's coming, taking you through technological unemployment (the economic singularity) and the possible creation of a superintelligence (the technological singularity).
©2015 Calum Chace (P)2015 Calum Chace
Pandora's Brain
Summary
About half the scientists researching artificial intelligence (AI) think that a conscious AI at or beyond human level will be created by 2050. If they are right, the consequence could be an intelligence explosion, in which the AI rapidly and enormously exceeds human cognitive ability. Pandora's Brain is a science and philosophy thriller by best-selling writer Calum Chace. It uses the issues raised by the coming machine intelligence explosion as a platform for a fast-paced and thought-provoking adventure story. Set in the very near future, it features Matt, a shy but engaging and resourceful student who discovers that his recently deceased father was involved in research that could enable the construction of the world's first conscious machine. Matt's enquiries lead to him being kidnapped, as he is caught in the crossfire between two groups pursuing that goal - one led by a Russian billionaire and another backed by the US military. Matt has to do more than simply survive. He has to harness these powerful forces to his own ends, and his life as well as his family's is at stake. A dramatic seaborne rescue operation, a series of brutal murders and other filmic action scenes follow. In the course of his adventures, Matt discovers that the potential upside of creating machine intelligence includes immortality and godlike powers of understanding and being - but the potential downside is immediate extinction, or worse. As he is drawn deeper into his adventure, he becomes both the symbol and the victim of a global struggle over the approach to be taken toward this powerful new technology. A landmark decision at a meeting of the UN General Assembly forces Matt to make a fateful decision, which sparks the story's final twist.
©2015 Calum Chace (P)2015 Calum Chace
The Economic Singularity
Summary
The Economic Singularity is the time when most people cannot find employment, because machines can do everything that humans can do for money cheaper, faster, and better than they can. Some people say this will never happen, but most AI professionals think it will, although they disagree about when. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already superhuman at absorbing and processing information. Robots are becoming increasingly dextrous, flexible, and safe to be around (except the military ones). AI is our most powerful technology, and you need to understand it. This new third edition of Calum Chace’s best-selling book is substantially updated and extended. It argues that the Economic Singularity is the most important challenge facing humanity in the first half of the 21st century - and also its most exciting opportunity. Self-driving cars and smartphones you can have a conversation with may be the canaries in the coal mine, providing a wake-up call for everyone who isn’t yet paying attention. All jobs will be affected, from fast food McJobs to lawyers and journalists. The fashionable belief that Universal Basic Income is the solution is only partly correct. We are probably going to need an entirely new economic system, and we should start planning for the Economic Singularity soon. Chace argues that the outcome can be very good - a world in which machines do all the boring jobs and humans do pretty much what they please. But he warns there are major risks, which we can only avoid by being alert to the possible futures and planning how to avoid the negative ones. Chace has been writing about AI since 1980, and has written two best-selling non-fiction books, and also two novels on the subject. In 2017, he co-founded the think tank, the Economic Singularity Foundation.
©2016, 2018, 2020 Calum Chace (P)2020 Calum Chace
Pandora's Oracle
Summary
Humanity creates god. Can humanity survive? The mind of a student named Matt has been uploaded into a supercomputer, but before he can achieve a fraction of his potential, his uploaded mind is captured and effectively frozen by a group within the US intelligence services. A couple of years later, this group need Matt’s help to tackle an existential threat to humanity. The risks are terrifying, but Matt agrees to help - after all, he has his own plans for the future. Pandora’s Oracle is a high-concept techno-thriller which describes our future after the arrival on earth of the first artificial super-intelligence. It is the sequel to Pandora’s Brain.
©2021 Calum Chace (P)2021 Calum Chace