The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI

The long-held dream of artificial intelligence researchers is to build machines that are conscious and self-aware - the dream of creating life itself. While this remains a remote prospect, the AI floodgates have opened, and they are changing our world fundamentally. Yet the public debate and media hype is still largely centred on elusive prospects such as sentient machines and dystopian robot takeovers. In this lively and clear-headed guide, Michael Wooldridge changes the narrative on AI, revealing how these anxieties distract us from the more realistic risks that this transformative technology poses, from algorithmic bias to fake news. He also shows us how they overlook the true life-changing potential of the field he loves. Instead, The Road to Conscious Machines gives us the real story of AI, through all its booms and busts, elucidating the discoveries of its greatest pioneers from Alan Turing to Demis Hassabis. It shows us what today's AI researchers actually think and do, and how they are ushering in a new era of real-time spoken word language translation, augmented reality tools, healthcare innovations and much more.