The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs [Paperback]

[W]itty and refined . . . Runcimans point is that the alliance between even a democratic government and a safe-ish A.I. could derail civilization. Gideon Lewis-Kraus, [W]itty and refined . . . Runcimans basic argument, which unfolds in the elegantly shaggy manner of a Peripatetic seminar, is that the alignment problem is not in fact an anomaly, and that the coming singularity might best be historicized as the Second Singularity. . . . he turns a standard argumentative form on its head. Its not that we can look to the past to help us solve the alignment problems of the future. Its that the alignment problems of the future help clarify our existing sense that everything is intractable and wrong. . . . Runcimans point is that the alliance between even a democratic government and a safe-ish A.I. could derail civilization. Ingenious . . . a well-informed and provocative read about the essence of political power. [A] searching meditation on creeping dehumanization . . . Runcimans approach to these issues is less technological than social and psychological . . . The result is a shrewd and stimulating look at societys drive toward an inhuman perfection. A thoughtful, learned contribution to the fevered conversation now surrounding AI. Amid a headlong international panic about a looming robot insurrection, David Runciman offers a searching history of earlier takeovers by other artificial creatures of our own makingstates and corporationsand a stirring call for a new and fortified commitment to all that is human. David Runciman is always fascinating. One of the great modern writers of democracy. Surely one of the most luminously intelligent [writers] on politics to have been published for many years. US