Editorial: Time to Think about Artificial Intelligence. "AI pervades our world and may soon start evolving faster than humans can track it--in whose hands should this awesome power reside? When it comes to emerging technologies, we know what we're afraid of, even though we may not know why. There is no shortage of public debate about genetically modified crops, nanotechnology and cloning. And policy makers have responded: many countries have laws that restrict the way these technologies can be used.

Mr. Markoff focuses on the personalities, since technology depends on the values of its creators. The human element makes the subject accessible. Before welcoming our robotic overlords, read [this] book. You should read this book. As Markoff explains in this engrossing narrative filled with colorful characters and head-snapping insights, the answer is up to us.

Despite recent attempts to tease the robotics projects incubating at its Google X skunkworks, industry observers say that Google has done more to stifle than advance innovation in robotics. On December 4th, 2013, John Markoff, a technology reporter for The New York Times, broke the story that Google had acquired seven robotic companies and that Andy Rubin, of Android fame, would be heading the group. Schaft, a Japanese start-up developing a humanoid robot; Industrial Perception, a Silicon Valley start-up that developed a computer vision system for loading and unloading trucks; Meka Robotics, a robot developer for academia; Redwood Robotics, a start-up intended to compete with the Baxter robot (and others) entering the small and medium-sized shop and factory marketplace; Bot & Dolly, a maker of robotic camera systems used for special effects such as in the movie "Gravity;" Autofuss, a design and marketing firm and a partner in Bot & Dolly; and Holomni, a maker of powered caster modules for omnidirectional vehicles. On December 14th, 2013, Markoff followed up with the news that Google had added to its new stable of robotic companies by acquiring Boston Dynamics, a 20-year old developer of mobile and off-road robotics and human simulation technology mostly for DARPA and the Department of Defense. Thus some of the leading startups in the industry and the whole 80 talent pool from Boston Dynamics became part of Google. "The company's initial market will be in manufacturing, e.g., electronics assembly which is mostly done by hand.

In Silicon Valley, over the past year, one of the most talked-about advances in technology hasn't been the latest Apple Watch, DJI's fancy drones, or Uber's impressive driverless cars. Instead, the Valley has been consumed by the question of whether our entire existence as human beings is actually a computer algorithm, and that we--all of us--are living in a simulation. I'm going to stop here for a second to let that sink in. This isn't just a theory advanced by a few engineers who have been to one too many Ayahuasca ceremonies. Elon Musk presented this theory at Vanity Fair's 2014 New Establishment Summit, when he explained on stage that there was a chance that the actual Summit wasn't real, but was instead a simulation.

You've likely heard stories about the birth of the PC: of Xerox PARC as the Mecca of computing; of its creation of the Alto, Ethernet, and the laser printer; of the Homebrew Computer Club, the MITS Altair, Bill Gates and the theft of his Micro-soft Basic; of Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, the founding of Apple, and the Jobs visit to PARC that inspired the Macintosh. But what you may not know about is the really early history. The stories of Doug Engelbart and John McCarthy, of the Augmentation Research Center, and of the early days of the Stanford University AI Lab (SAIL) are not well known. Yes, you may have heard that Engelbart invented the mouse, and that SAIL and Stanford led to companies like Sun and Cisco. But there are better stories, great and old ones from the early days of computing, about the events that led to personal computing as we know it. In his wonderful new book, What the Dormouse Said…, John Markoff tells these stories.

The cars use sensors and computing power to maneuver around traffic. The cars use sensors and computing power to maneuver around traffic. From Rosie, the Jetsons' robot maid, to Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg in The Terminator, popular culture has frequently conceived of robots as having a humanlike form, complete with "eyes" and mechanical limbs. But tech reporter John Markoff says that robots don't always have a physical presence. "I have a very broad definition of what a robot is," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

UBIQUITY: Congratulations on "What the Dormouse Said" it's a fascinating book. MARKOFF: Well, I guess I'd call it a revisionist history. It about things that happened around Stanford University between roughly 1960 and 1975, and is a kind of pre-history of personal computing and the personal computer industry. What I was trying to do was to get at some of the culture through which the technology was developed. MARKOFF: Because technology never happens in a vacuum. The book was an effort to try to pin down how personal computing first emerged around the Stanford campus at two laboratories in the 1960's: one was run by John McCarthy, and was called the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; and the other was run by Doug Engelbart and known as the Augmentation Research Center or the Augmented Human Intellect Research Center.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking all have something in common: All three have gone on the record sharing their concerns and fears about artificial intelligence and robotics. While these technologies hold a great deal of promise, and will have a real impact on our future, it's important for us to understand the ramifications they could have for all of us, particularly in terms of labor. My first big concern about AI was recently highlighted in a New York Times piece by John Markoff, who wrote that while AI has great potential for good, it could also be abused by criminals who might use it for their nefarious goals. The growing sophistication of computer criminals can be seen in the evolution of attack tools like the widely used malicious program known as Blackshades, according to Mr. Goodman. The author of the program, a Swedish national, was convicted last year in the United States. The system, which was sold widely in the computer underground, functioned as a "criminal franchise in a box," Mr. Goodman said.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking all have something in common: All three have gone on the record sharing their concerns and fears about artificial intelligence and robotics. While these technologies hold a great deal of promise, and will have a real impact on our future, it's important for us to understand the ramifications they could have for all of us, particularly in terms of labor. My first big concern about AI was recently highlighted in a New York Times piece by John Markoff, who wrote that while AI has great potential for good, it could also be abused by criminals who might use it for their nefarious goals. The growing sophistication of computer criminals can be seen in the evolution of attack tools like the widely used malicious program known as Blackshades, according to Mr. Goodman. The author of the program, a Swedish national, was convicted last year in the United States.

Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking all have something in common: All three have gone on the record sharing their concerns and fears about artificial intelligence and robotics. While these technologies hold a great deal of promise, and will have a real impact on our future, it's important for us to understand the ramifications they could have for all of us, particularly in terms of labor. My first big concern about AI was recently highlighted in a New York Times piece by John Markoff, who wrote that while AI has great potential for good, it could also be abused by criminals who might use it for their nefarious goals. The growing sophistication of computer criminals can be seen in the evolution of attack tools like the widely used malicious program known as Blackshades, according to Mr. Goodman. The author of the program, a Swedish national, was convicted last year in the United States.