A Way with Words
Why Language Makes Humans Irreplaceable
Will be published approx. on 2. February 2027
272 pages
E-Book
978-1-5416-0835-1 (ISBN)
Description
A brilliant examination of history and language that explains why AI, for all of its wonders, cannot truly speak.
For all of history, the only creature on earth that could speak was man. Then suddenly, with the dawn of artificial intelligence, a machine could talk back. AI seems to do the very thing that makes us human.
Yet appearance is deceptive. Are the bots really speaking? What does it mean to speak? And why is language so essential to what we are as a species? In this urgent yet timeless book, classicist and polymath Spencer A. Klavan addresses these questions and constructs a resounding defense of human language-man's unique power of thought and expression that is as old as Homo sapiens itself. The result is the most illuminating response to AI yet offered.
Guiding us on a breathtaking journey through the history of language, Klavan reveals the wonder of our universal capacity to communicate the internal world of one's mind through external sounds and symbols. Though it is now fashionable to deny that words have any meaning at all, Klavan shows that human words draw meaning from the cosmic Word-the logos imprinted on creation. This is the mystery of language, and the key to our unique place in the world.
For all of history, the only creature on earth that could speak was man. Then suddenly, with the dawn of artificial intelligence, a machine could talk back. AI seems to do the very thing that makes us human.
Yet appearance is deceptive. Are the bots really speaking? What does it mean to speak? And why is language so essential to what we are as a species? In this urgent yet timeless book, classicist and polymath Spencer A. Klavan addresses these questions and constructs a resounding defense of human language-man's unique power of thought and expression that is as old as Homo sapiens itself. The result is the most illuminating response to AI yet offered.
Guiding us on a breathtaking journey through the history of language, Klavan reveals the wonder of our universal capacity to communicate the internal world of one's mind through external sounds and symbols. Though it is now fashionable to deny that words have any meaning at all, Klavan shows that human words draw meaning from the cosmic Word-the logos imprinted on creation. This is the mystery of language, and the key to our unique place in the world.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
approx. 02/2027
Basic Liberty
€47.79
Not yet published
Person
Spencer A. Klavan is cohost, with his father Andrew Klavan, of the Daily Wire podcast Klavans on the Culture and host of his own podcast, Young Heretics. An editor of the Claremont Review of Books, he earned his doctorate in classics from the University of Oxford and is the author of How to Save the West and Light of the Mind, Light of the World. He lives in Nashville.
