Stephen Cave
AI vs IQ
The Singularity: Could Artificial Intelligence Really Out-Think Us (And Would We Want It To)?
By Uziel Awret (ed)
Imprint Academic 426pp £60 order from our bookshop
I used to be a sceptic about the ‘technological singularity’, the idea that we are on the verge of creating machines so unimaginably intelligent that human history will enter a wholly new and unfathomable phase. My scepticism stemmed largely from the quasi-religious awe that surrounds the idea. Like the mysterious black monolith in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the singularity is a blankness onto which adherents project primordial fantasies of immortality and omnipotence, heaven and hell.
As a keen student of mythology, I am always inclined to take a wry view of such projections, which recur in different variations, secular and religious, in every generation, couched in the language of the day. For us, that is the vocabulary of advanced technology: robots, avatars and
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is one of the most engaging cold-case novels I have read.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews novels by @sarah_hilary, @erskine_fiona, @aadhand, @claremackint0sh, @imranmahmood777, @NancyCNTucker, @josephknox__, @SlaughterKarin, @T_J_Newman & @Egan_Hughes.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/june-2021-crime-round-up
'Here Rogers’s focus is upon the protracted, often puerile fight between the hardened Grub Street professional and a thin-skinned, unforgiving writer.'
Freya Johnston on the time Alexander Pope took on Grub Street.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-writers-revenge
'If a Cuskian invention embarrasses herself, it is her own fault; Cusk has given her the rope and she has hung herself with it. And with this dignity comes a kind of freedom.'
@mmpopkey weighs up Rachel Cusk's 'Second Place'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/finding-freedom