By paying close attention to the metaphors of artificial intelligence and their consequences for the field's patterns of success and failure, this text argues for a reorientation of the field away from thought and toward activity. It offers a critical reconstruction of AI research.

How can human-level artificial intelligence be achieved? What are the potential consequences? This book describes a research approach toward achieving human-level AI, combining a doctoral thesis and research papers by the author. The research approach, called TalaMind, involves developing an AI system that uses a 'natural language of thought' based on the unconstrained syntax of a language such as English; designing the system as a collection of concepts that can create and modify concepts to behave intelligently in an environment; and using methods from cognitive linguistics for multiple levels of mental representation. Proposing a design-inspection alternative to the Turing Test, these pages discuss 'higher-level mentalities' of human intelligence, which include natural language understanding, higher-level forms of learning and reasoning, imagination, and consciousness. Dr. Jackson gives a comprehensive review of other research, addresses theoretical objections to the proposed approach and to achieving human-level AI in principle, and describes a prototype system that illustrates the potential of the approach. This book discusses economic risks and benefits of AI, considers how to ensure that human-level AI and superintelligence will be beneficial for humanity, and gives reasons why human-level AI may be necessary for humanity's survival and prosperity.

The perspectives and techniques used in human-computer interaction design, practice and research are broadening. This book looks at emerging approaches which are likely to contribute to the discipline in near future. The emphasis is on the social, cognitive, emotional, creative and active dimensions of the human actor. The underlying idea is that human character rather than technology should determine the nature of interaction. The concept of "interaction design" covers this broader range of concerns relevant to enabling quality design. Each chapter emphasizes alternative perspectives on interaction and new concepts to help researchers and practitioners relate to alternative design approaches and opportunities. Many of these new elements can be found to be successful and established in other fields, such as information systems development and industrial design. This volume will be of considerable value to those seeking innovative and developing perspectives upon both designing and ensuring effective interaction between humans and technology.

Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines. Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation for the scientific study of consciousness. It sets out a bold interpretation of consciousness that neutralizes the philosophical problems and explains how we can make scientific predictions about the consciousness of animals, brain-damaged patients and machines. Gamez interprets the scientific study of consciousness as a search for mathematical theories that map between measurements of consciousness and measurements of the physical world. We can use artificial intelligence to discover these theories and they could make accurate predictions about the consciousness of humans, animals and artificial systems. Human and Machine Consciousness also provides original insights into unusual conscious experiences, such as hallucinations, religious experiences and out-of-body states, and demonstrates how ‘designer’ states of consciousness could be created in the future. Gamez explains difficult concepts in a clear way that closely engages with scientific research. His punchy, concise prose is packed with vivid examples, making it suitable for the educated general reader as well as philosophers and scientists. Problems are brought to life in colourful illustrations and a helpful summary is given at the end of each chapter. The endnotes provide detailed discussions of individual points and full references to the scientific and philosophical literature.

This distinguished collection of essays explores the place of natural language in human cognition.

The new scientific paradigm of 'embodied mind' or 'situated cognition' is percolating into popular mind science, but its fundaments, autopoiesis and structural coupling, have never been thoroughly explained. Combines the paradigm shift in biology initiated by Maturana and Varela with the recent rush of ideas in social neuroscience to create what hopes to be a refreshingly new explanation of the way our mind works in our everyday experience and reveals the most common blind spots in what we thought we knew about our mind. These blind spots are spoiling our individual lives and harming our prospects for peaceful coexistence and care of our environment, e.g., the mistaken ideas that meaning is transferable, that decisions come from conscious awareness, or that knowledge is a commodity. The biological significance of love and the value of embracing uncertainty and respecting the unknown point to a very hopeful vision for our future. This is a scientific explanation of mind, leavened with process philosophy, also invoking spirituality without any religious connotation.

New York Times Best Seller How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial. How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle? What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues—from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.