As robots are increasingly integrated into modern societyon the battlefield and the road, in business, education, and healthPulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff searches for an answer to one of the most important questions of our age: will these machines help us, or will they replace us?In the past decade alone, Google introduced us to driverless cars, Apple debuted a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets, and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the internet. There is little doubt that robots are now an integral part of society, and cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that, in the coming years, these robots will soon act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immense computing power, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, at the birth of the intelligent machine: Will we control these systems, or will they control us?In Machines of Loving Grace, New York Times reporter John Markoff, the first reporter to cover the World Wide Web, offers a sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers. Over the recent years, the pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically, reintroducing this difficult ethical quandary with newer and far weightier consequences. As Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s, to the modern day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding tech corridor between Boston and New York, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work.We are on the verge of a technological revolution, Markoff argues, and robots will profoundly transform the way our lives are organized. Developers must now draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine, or risk upsetting the delicate balance between them.
Cited By
- Spektor F, Fox S, Awumey E, Begleiter B, Kulkarni C, Stringam B, Riordan C, Rho H, Akridge H and Forlizzi J (2023). Charting the Automation of Hospitality: An Interdisciplinary Literature Review Examining the Evolution of Frontline Service work in the Face of Algorithmic Management, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 7:CSCW1, (1-20), Online publication date: 14-Apr-2023.
- Chua A, Pal A and Banerjee S (2023). AI-enabled investment advice, Computers in Human Behavior, 138:C, Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023.
- Barricelli B, Fischer G, Fogli D, Morch A, Piccinno A and Valtolina S CoPDA 2022 - Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age: AI for Humans or Humans for AI? Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, (1-3)
- Troiano G, Wood M and Harteveld C "And This, Kids, Is How I Met Your Mother": Consumerist, Mundane, and Uncanny Futures with Sex Robots Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (1-17)
- Salehzadeh Niksirat K, Sarcar S, Sun H, Law E, Clemmensen T, Bardzell J, Oulasvirta A, Silpasuwanchai C, Light A and Ren X Approaching Engagement towards Human-Engaged Computing Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (1-4)
- Dubhashi D and Lappin S (2017). AI dangers, Communications of the ACM, 60:2, (43-45), Online publication date: 23-Jan-2017.
Index Terms
- Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
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