Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Murray Shanahan has recently published a new book 'The Technological Singularity'

Professor Murray Shanahan has published ‘The Technological Singularity’ with MIT Press. The singularity will arrive if, at some point in the future, humans are overtaken by artificially intelligent machines, or cognitively enhanced biological intelligence, or both. This topic has moved from the realms of science fiction to an area of serious debate for the present century.

Murray’s book provides an introduction to the ideas of singularity and the potential ramifications it could have, aimed at a broad audience. Murray hopes the book “is accessible to anyone with a basic understanding of computers. This would include students in scientific disciplines and IT professionals, as well as members of the public interested in AI.”

Murray said of his motivation for writing the book; “There has been a great upsurge of interest in AI, both from industry and the public. As well as films like Her and Ex Machina, companies like Google and Facebook have been investing heavily in AI research. However, I started work on the book a couple of years ago, before this trend really got started. I felt there needed to be much more discussion of the future of AI and its implications for society, which are potentially huge. But many of the basic concepts and arguments, including the very idea of a technological singularity, were familiar only to a few people, even in the AI community.”

We asked Murray what he hopes the book can achieve and he said, “I would like to raise awareness of the issues surrounding the possibility that human-level AI will be developed some time in this century. The potential ramifications for humanity if this happens are so great that, even if it's decades away, we need to start talking about them now. We don't know what human-level AI will be like, so it's very hard to see what these ramifications are. Will it be human-like (as well as human-level), or will it be an alien sort of intelligence? We don't know. But we can make educated guesses, and prepare accordingly.”

The Library Journal writes of the book; “This evenhanded primer on a topic whose significance is becoming increasingly recognized ought, as per its inclusion in this series, to receive wide exposure. It will naturally appeal more to those with lay interests in philosophy, ethics, anthropology, computer science, cognitive science, engineering, sf, and world issues.”

Congratulations to Murray!

As well as celebrating his book publication, Murray has also been in the press recently featuring on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday 15^th  September as part of the BBC "intelligent machines" week, and on the same day on Radio 4's Today programme, talking about AI.

For further information on ‘The Technological Singularity’ please see:

 MIT Press- Shanahan