What happens when machines become smarter than humans? Forget lumbering Terminators. The power of an artificial intelligence (AI) comes from its intelligence, not physical strength and laser guns. Humans steer the future not because we're the strongest or the fastest but because we're the smartest. When machines become smarter than humans, we'll be handing them the steering wheel. What promises—and perils—will these powerful machines present? Stuart Armstrong's new book navigates these que...

This volume contains a selection of authoritative essays exploring thecentral questions raised by the conjectured technological singularity.In informed yet jargon-free contributions written by active researchscientists, philosophers and sociologists, it goes beyond philosophicaldiscussion to provide a detailed account of the risks that the singularityposes to human society and, perhaps most usefully, the possible actionsthat society and techn...

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our...

A New York Times Bestseller. A “fascinating” (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times) look at how digital technology is transforming our work and our lives.In recent years, Google’s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM’s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies—with hardware, software, and networks at their core—will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than ...

Useful information and real hope for patients and families whose lives have been altered by traumatic brain injury.A traumatic brain injury is a life-changing event, affecting an individual’s lifestyle, ability to work, relationships—even personality. Whatever caused it—car crash, work accident, sports injury, domestic violence, combat—a severe blow to the head results in acute and, often, lasting symptoms. People with brain injury benefit from understanding, patie...

Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment offers authoritative, jargon-free essays and critical commentaries on accelerating technological progress and the notion of technological singularity. It focuses on conjectures about the intelligence explosion, transhumanism, and whole brain emulation. Recent years have seen a plethora of forecasts about the profound, disruptive impact that is likely to result from further progress in these areas. Many comme...

This book addresses the methodological issues involved in responsible innovation and provides an overview of recent applications of multidisciplinary research. Responsible innovation involves research into the ethical and societal aspects of new technologies (e.g. ICT, nanotechnology, biotechnology and brain sciences) and of changes in technological systems (e.g. energy, transport, agriculture and water). This research is highly multidisciplinary. It involves close collaboration between re...

In spite of their relatively low prevalence, systemic vasculitides have been the object of intensive basic and clinical investigations over the last few years. As a consequence, important advancements have been achieved: from updated diagnostic and classification criteria and a more rational nomenclature to the recognition of an expanding spectrum of clinical manifestations and potentially devastating complications; from the recognition of the viral etiology of conditions such as HCV-relat...

This volume illustrates to the public, and legal experts, the basic principles of the field of neuroscience, that commonly goes under the name of Neurolaw. First, it illustrates the relationship between neuroscience, natural sciences and social sciences. Furthermore, it highlights numerous problems concerning the fundamental philosophical concepts used by Neurolaw and evaluates the validity of the method and the limits of a neuroscientific approach to the problems of law and justice.

This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years. Convergence in knowledge, technology, and society is the accelerating, transformative interaction among seemingly distinct scientific disciplines, technologies, and communities to achieve mutual compatibility, synergism, and integration, and through this process ...

This book is focused on the examination of the particular relationship between developments in neuroscience and commonsense concepts, such as free will, personal identity, privacy, etc., which feature prominently in moral discourse. In the book common sense is recast as an ever-shifting repository of theories from many domains, including science. Utilizing this alternative characterization of common sense, the book reexamines the impact of neuroscience on commonsense moral conceptions....

Motion processing is an essential piece of the complex brain machinery that allows us to reconstruct the 3D layout of objects in the environment, to break camouflage, to perform scene segmentation, to estimate the ego movement, and to control our action. Although motion perception and its neural basis have been a topic of intensive research and modeling the last two decades, recent experimental evidences have stressed the dynamical aspects of motion integration and segmentation. This book ...