The Atomic Human: What Makes Us Unique in the Age of AI [Hardcover]

From a renowned computer scientist, this book seeks the distinctive human quality that will prevail against artificial intelligence.

If artificial intelligence takes over decision-making what, then, is unique and irreplaceable about human intelligence?The Atomic Humanis a journey of discovery to the core of what it is to be human, in search of the qualities that cannot be replaced by the machine. Neil Lawrence brings a timely, fresh perspective to this new era, recounting his personal journey to understand the riddle of intelligence. 

By contrasting our own intelligence with the capabilities of machine intelligence through history,The Atomic Humanreveals the technical origins, capabilities, and limitations of AI systems, and how they should be wielded–not just by the experts, but ordinary people.  

Neil Lawrence is the DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge where he leads the university-wide initiative on AI, and a Senior AI Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. Previously he was Director of Machine Learning at Amazon, deploying solutions for Alexa, Prime Air and the Amazon supply chain. Co-host of theTalking Machinespodcast, he's written a series forThe Guardianand appeared regularly on other media.


 “Neil D. Lawrence’sThe Atomic Humanisa brilliant technological and philosophical tour de force by one of the world’s foremost authorities on AI and machine learning. Anyone interested in the great promise and potential dangers of AI and machine learning would do well to read this book.The Atomic Humanis at once fascinating, entertaining, and a deeply serious study on the most consequential emerging technologies humans have ever developed. Lawrence has plenty of computer science laced through the book, but he makes it understandable to the non-specialist by historical examples and analogy. It is alsl£ž