From the Publisher
This is a remarkable book. It makes a plausible case for some controversial conclusions and manages to be both profound and highly accessible. It will be essential reading for serious scholars of the future of intelligence.
Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, and Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge
This deeply informed book offers a bilateral view of artificial intelligence from computer science and philosophical perspectives, working from good old-fashioned (first-wave) AI through (second-wave) deep learning to the imminent (third-wave) future. It provides, at exactly the right time, a rounded and thoughtful narrative that is both sobering and exciting.
Karl Friston, FRS, University College London
Brian Cantwell Smith's timely new book provides a philosophically nuanced account of the profound conceptual obstacles that still need to be overcome if we are ever to endow machines with human-level general intelligence.
Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Imperial College London; author of
Embodiment and the Inner Life and
The Technological SingularityAt this critical juncture in the resurgent promise of artificial intelligence, Brian Cantwell Smith offers a technically grounded philosophical reflection on computation and human reasoning. This book is an invaluable contribution to the demystification of AI and to the reaffirmation of judgment as a condition of understanding and accountability.
Lucy Suchman, author of
Human–Machine ReconfigurationsThe Promise of Artificial Intelligence stands on the continental divide of AI that separates the past, based on symbol processing and syntax, from the future, based on learning and semantics grounded in sensory experience. The views are inspiring.
Terrence Sejnowski, Distinguished Professor, University of California, San Diego; Francis Crick Professor, Salk Institute