Talking to Robots: Tales from Our Human-Robot Futures
About this book
Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan considers 24 visions of possible human-robot futures--Incredible scenarios from Teddy Bots to Warrior Bots, and Politician Bots to Sex Bots--Grounded in real technologies and possibilities and inspired by our imagination. 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 about our human-robot future? For even as robots and A.I. 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's also about what robots tell us about being human.Prelude: When the robots arrived --Teddy bear bot --The %$@! robot that swiped my job --Sex (intimacy) bot --Facebook bot --Doc bot --Hello, robot driver --Warrior bot --Beer bot --It's not about the robots bot --Politician bot --Wearable bot --Amazon bot --Journalism bot --Mars (Daemon) bot --Risk-free bot --Brain optimization bot --Thriller bot --Coffee delivery bot --Memory bot --Matrix bot --Homo digitalis/homo syntheticis --Tourist (evolution) bot --God bot --Immortal me bot --Epilogue: After the robots arrived