Elon Musk named Our Final Invention one of 5 books everyone should read about the future A Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013 In as little as a decade, artificial intelligence could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies around the world are pouring billions into achieving AI's Holy Grail--human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine. Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, James Barrat's Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI.

We discuss why James wrote this book 3 years ago now, how far away he really thinks we are from artificial human intelligence, the warning bells recently being sounded about artificial intelligence, and why he thinks there will not be another AI winter. Our guest today is James Barrat author of the book "Our final Invention" Artificial Intelligence and the end of the Human Era". It's good to be here. Kathleen Walch: [00:00:39] Great, I'd like to get started by having you introduce yourself to our listeners and to tell us a little bit about your book and also what additional things that you're doing in the field of AI and let's go from there. I got into artificial intelligence, or the study of artificial intelligence, and the critique of AI because I made a film about 17 years ago now about artificial intelligence. I interviewed Ray Kurzweil and Rodney Brooks and Arthur C. Clarke among others … and Ray Kurzweil of course who is now chief engineer at Google and the Google brain project.

Most of us believe we're living in an era of technology. Artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchains, and IoT are all here. They're a given in our lives. But machines and technology are just tools whizzing through automated, repetitive, and standardized tasks. Though these amazing technological capabilities have become the norm, they are ushering in a new era where it is humans that make the key difference in enterprises, society, and the economy.

Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It's in your smart phone, your car, and it has the run of your house. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls our transportation, energy, and water infrastructure. Artificial Intelligence is for the 21st century what electricity was for the 20th and steam power for the 19th. The Hollywood cliché that artificial intelligence will take over the world could soon become scientific reality as AI matches then surpasses human intelligence.