The Atomic Human

Reviews / Votes

Hugely recommended -- Stephen Fry fascinating debut book -- Andrew Robinson * Nature * A brilliant technological and philosophical tour de force by one of the world's foremost authorities on the world of AI and machine learning -- Mark A. Milley, General, US Army (Ret), 20th Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff According to Professor Neil Lawrence, all of us suffer from locked-in syndrome ... I have been gripped by this insight. Lawrence's book concludes that whatever AI becomes, and whether or not it ultimately poses a threat to our species, it will never replicate or penetrate the essence of what it means to be human ... To be a human is, indeed, to be locked in. But it is in our struggle against inarticulacy that we find our deepest voice and highest meaning -- Matthew Syed * The Sunday Times * This is an utterly absorbing account of humans, computers, and how much they differ. It explains why AI cannot substitute for human intelligence even as machine intelligence poses enormous challenges for how information is used and societies are organised -- Dame Diane Coyle, author of Cogs and Monsters for anyone and everyone who is interested in what makes humans different from machines by one of the world's experts in AI research. Understanding the differences more may help us live in harmony alongside very intelligent machines so that we can worry less about existential threats and more about how we work with intelligent machines to make the world a better place -- Dame Wendy Hall, co-author of Four Internets The intellectual sweep of Sapiens focused on understanding and contrasting human and machine intelligence and what this means for society. Professor Lawrence invites the general reader to join him in the debate, effortlessly bridging C. P. Snow's 'two cultures' with lucid accessible explanations of key concepts from mathematics and computer science and resonant human and cultural stories by way of Democritus, Ernest Hemingway and the information contained in our assumptions about what car his mother drives -- Dr Jean Innes, CEO The Alan Turing Institute An enlightening read on AI. Lawrence reminds us that brilliant story telling is the human way to communicate at scale given our otherwise structurally low bandwidth. My main take away is the importance of the difference between intelligence as a property rather than intelligence as an entity -- Lord Petitgas, UK Prime Minister's Special Adviser on Business and Investment Lawrence offers novel insight into what intelligence is, how it evolved, and how it is distributed in different living and non-living systems ... It has an admirable central humanist message: that we are irreplaceable despite the scary waffle of popular discourse -- Adam Rutherford * The Guardian * Neil Lawrence is one of the world's foremost authorities on AI and one of the few who has deployed AI in large-scale industrial systems. He is also a rare technical leader who understands AI as part of a long evolution of human beings interacting with other intelligences in a cognitive landscape. In this thoughtful and engaging book - ranging from James Watt's steam engines to World War II gunners and the Apollo lunar landings - Lawrence shows us what's novel and what's human about AI. A must read for anyone seeking to understand AI's place in our world and how to harness it for human flourishing -- David A. Mindell, Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT