Talking to Robots

Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan sketches twenty-four visions of possible human-robot futures - short scenarios grounded in present-day technologies and ideas, but inspired by imagination. He explores how robots and AI systems may impact on individuals and societies over the next few years, centuries and beyond - for better or for worse.What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate for our human-robot future? For even as robots and AI intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology - it also concerns what robots tell us about being human.From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that swiped my job' bots, this is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined.Praise for the author:'The Calendar sparkles. Gripping, expansive and scholarly, it will be indispensable reading for years to come. Duncan has achieved a rare feat in turning something ordinary into an extraordinary metaphor of life.'Observer