The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence

In The Sentient Machine Amir Husain, one of the world’s leading technologists, looks at our future as humanity stands on the edge of a second Big Bang, the moment when machines can think independently. Will machines solve all human problems or will they lead us down a dystopian path to human irrelevance?

Husain asks what will be the consequences — from job losses, is Wall-E our future, to the existential questions: how are we intelligent, what constitutes progress, how can AI bring us to “the good life”?

“We can argue over the details – for ten years or five decades or one hundred years – but the data all points in one direction: most of the jobs that humans do today will be done by machines in the future.”

By 2030 Amir Husain estimates that 30% of current UK jobs could be lost, while Germany could lose 35% of its jobs.

What are “the real-world implications of an explosion of artificial intelligence that is outpacing our ability to understand its consequences”? Husain investigates how artificial intelligence has already changed society (and our political future), from the use of ‘big data’ for the ‘Leave’ campaign during the Brexit referendum, which “takes us one step further away from more familiar forms of manipulation, such as advertising campaigns, and into a realm where all of our decisions can be tracked, measured, and optimized” to the weaponization of software.

Amir Husain explores the dawn of a new form of intellectual diversity, one that could advance the state of the art in many critical fields, including security, resource management, finance, and energy. The Sentient Machine provides a history of artificial intelligence (boiling down complex computer science and AI concepts into clear, plainspoken language) and draws from a wide variety of cultural and historical references to illustrate its possible future.