How do you feel about your phone? Or your car? You probably don't think about them much, except when they go wrong. But what if they go really wrong and turn properly bad – evil, even? Join Terry Jones on a hilariously disturbing journey into the dark heart of machines that go wrong: meet the lift that takes people to places they don't want to go, the vacuum cleaner that's just too powerful, the apparently nice bomb, the truthful phone, the terrifying train to anywhere, and Mrs. Morris, a little old lady from Glasgow who turns out to be a very resourceful heroine... Brisk and cheerful on the outside, but as edgy and uncomfortable as any of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected within, Terry Jones's collection of thirteen cautionary fables will make you look at the 'helpful' inventions that surround you in a very different way. A brilliantly-written and gleefully mischievous book, suitable for Luddites of all ages or anyone who likes a bit of Pythonesque edge to their silliness.

Are AI robots and computers really going to take over the world? Longtime artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and investor Steve Shwartz has grown frustrated with the fear-inducing hype around AI in popular culture and media. Yes, today’s AI systems are miracles of modern engineering, but no, humans do not have to fear robots seizing control or taking over all our jobs. In this exploration of the fascinating and ever-changing landscape of artificial intelligence, Dr. Shwartz explains how AI works in simple terms. After reading this captivating book, you will understand • the inner workings of today’s amazing AI technologies, including facial recognition, self-driving cars, machine translation, chatbots, deepfakes, and many others; • why today’s artificial intelligence technology cannot evolve into the AI of science fiction lore; • the crucial areas where we will need to adopt new laws and policies in order to counter threats to our safety and personal freedoms resulting from the use of AI. So although we don’t have to worry about evil robots rising to power and turning us into pets—and we probably never will—artificial intelligence is here to stay, and we must learn to separate fact from fiction and embrace how this amazing technology enhances our world.

Artificial intelligence is an essential part of our lives – for better or worse. It can be used to influence what we buy, who gets shortlisted for a job and even how we vote. Without AI, medical technology wouldn’t have come so far, we’d still be getting lost on backroads in our GPS-free cars, and smartphones wouldn’t be so, well, smart. But as we continue to build more intelligent and autonomous machines, what impact will this have on humanity and the planet? Professor Toby Walsh, a world-leading researcher in the field of artificial intelligence, explores the ethical considerations and unexpected consequences AI poses – Is Alexa racist? Can robots have rights? What happens if a self-driving car kills someone? What limitations should we put on the use of facial recognition? Machines Behaving Badly is a thought-provoking look at the increasing human reliance on robotics and the decisions that need to be made now to ensure the future of AI is as a force for good, not evil.

Miracle and Machine is a sort of "reader's guide" to Jacques Derrida's 1994-95 essay "faith and knowledge," his most important work on the nature of religion in general and on the unprecedented forms it is taking today through science and the media. It provides essential background for understanding Derrida's essay, commentary on its unique style and its central figures (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Bergson, and Heidegger), and assessment of its principal philosophical claims about the fundamental duplicity of religion and the ineluctably autoimmune relationship among religion, science, and the media. Along the way it offers in-depth analysis of Derrida's treatment of everything from the nature of religious revelation, faith, prayer, sacrifice, testimony, messianicity, fundamentalism, and secularism to the way religion is today being transformed by globalization, technoscience, and worldwide telecommunications networks. But Miracle and Machine is much more than a commentary on a single Derrida text. Through references to scores of other works by Derrida, both early and late, it also provides a unique introduction to Derrida's work in general. It demonstrates that one of the very best ways to understand the terms, themes, claims, strategies, and motivations of Derridean deconstruction from the early 1960s through 2004 is to read critically and patiently, in its spirit and in its letter, an exemplary text such as "Faith and Knowledge." Finally, Miracle and Machine attempts to put Derrida's ideas about religion to the test by reading alongside "Faith and Knowledge" an already classic work of American fiction that is more or less contemporaneous with it, Don DeLillo's 1997 Underworld, a novel that explores the same relationship between faith and knowledge, religion and science, religious revelation and the World Wide Web, messianicity, and weapons of mass destruction--in a word, in two words, miracles and machines.

This book describes real-world killer robots using a blend of perspectives. Overviews of technologies, such as autonomy and artificial intelligence, demonstrate how science enables these robots to be effective killers. Incisive analyses of social controversies swirling around the design and use of killer robots reveal that science, alone, will not govern their future. Among those disputes is whether fully-autonomous, robotic weapons should be banned. Examinations of killers from the golem to Frankenstein's monster reveal that artificially-created beings like them are precursors of real 21st century killer robots. This book laces the death and destruction caused by all these killers with science and humor. The seamless combination of these elements produces a deeper and richer understanding of the robots around us.

Contemporary research in science and engineering is seeking to harness the versatility and sustainability of living organisms. By exploiting natural principles, researchers hope to create new kinds of technology that are self-repairing, adaptable, and robust, and to invent a new class of machines that are perceptive, social, emotional, perhaps even conscious. This is the realm of the 'living machine'. Living machines can be divided into two types: biomimetic systems, that harness the principles discovered in nature and embody them in new artifacts, and biohybrid systems in which biological entities are coupled with synthetic ones. Living Machines: A handbook of research in biomimetic and biohybrid systems surveys this flourishing area of research, capturing the current state of play and pointing to the opportunities ahead. Promising areas in biomimetics include self-organization, biologically inspired active materials, self-assembly and self-repair, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, locomotion in air, on land or in water, perception, cognition, control, and communication. Drawing on these advances the potential of biomimetics is revealed in devices that can harvest energy, grow or reproduce, and in animal-like robots that range from synthetic slime molds, to artificial fish, to humanoids. Biohybrid systems is a relatively new field, with exciting and largely unknown potential, but one that is likely to shape the future of humanity. This book surveys progress towards new kinds of biohybrid such as robots that merge electronic neurons with biological tissue, micro-scale machines made from living cells, prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch, and brain-machine interfaces that allow robotic devices to be controlled by human thought. The handbook concludes by exploring some of the impacts that living machine technologies could have on both society and the individual, exploring questions about how we will see and understand ourselves in a world in which the line between the natural and the artificial is increasingly blurred. With contributions from leading researchers from science, engineering, and the humanities, this handbook will be of broad interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students. Researchers in the areas of computational modeling and engineering, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, artificial life, biorobotics, neurorobotics, and human-machine interfaces will find Living Machines an invaluable resource.