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What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
Doubleday
March 2011
On Sale: March 8, 2011
320 pages
ISBN: 0385533063
EAN: 9780385533065
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and
profound exploration of the ways in which computers are
reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its
starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits
artificial intelligence programs against people to determine
if computers can “think.” Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Turing Test
convenes a panel of judges who pose questions—ranging
anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums—to hidden
contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and
which is a computer. The machine that most often fools the
panel wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also
a prize, bizarre and intriguing, for the Most Human Human. In 2008, the top AI program came short of passing the Turing
Test by just one astonishing vote. In 2009, Brian Christian
was chosen to participate, and he set out to make sure Homo
sapiens would prevail. The author’s quest to be deemed more human than a computer
opens a window onto our own nature. Interweaving modern
phenomena like customer service “chatbots” and men using
programmed dialogue to pick up women in bars with insights
from fields as diverse as chess, psychiatry, and the law,
Brian Christian examines the philosophical, biological, and
moral issues raised by the Turing Test. One central definition of human has been “a being that could
reason.” If computers can reason, what does that mean for
the special place we reserve for humanity?
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