Human Compatible

A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machinesIn the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable.In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage.If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves. How can we ensure they never, ever, have power over us? Russell suggests that we can rebuild AI on a new foundation, according to which machines are designed to be inherently uncertain about the human preferences they are required to satisfy. Such machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursue our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.

IMPRESSIVE ENDORSEMENTS: "The most important book I have read in quite some time" (Daniel Kahneman); "A must-read" (Max Tegmark); "The book we've all been waiting for" (Sam Harris)PLATFORM: Russell is one of the most prominent thinkers and researchers on AI, often quoted in the press. He is the co-author of the #1 bestselling textbook on AI, now in its fourth edition with an estimated 350,000 copies sold. He has appeared on shows ranging from NPR's "Science Friday" to Sam Harris's podcast "Waking Up."INSIDER'S VIEW: Russell is an actual AI researcher, as opposed to the authors of other AI books who tend either to be journalists or physicists; he is writing this book from the inside of AI, and has done a lifetime of thinking on the subject. He also presents a view that is quite different from that afforded through the media, which tends to be full of breathless stories about the inexorable progress of AI.