Machines of Loving Grace
As robots become more integrated into modern society—on the battlefield and on the road, in business, education, and health care—Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff seeks an answer to one of our generation's most pressing questions: will these machines assist us or replace us? In only the last decade, Google has introduced us to self-driving vehicles, Apple has released a personal assistant that we can carry in our pockets, and the Internet of Things has connected the tiny chores of daily life to the internet's farthest reaches. There is no doubt that robots have become a vital part of civilization, and inexpensive sensors and strong processors will assure that these robots will soon be able to operate independently in the coming years. This new age promises massive computing power, but it also reframes a question that was originally posed more than half a century ago, when the intelligent machine was born: Will we control these systems, or will they govern us?
The first writer to cover the World Wide Web, New York Times reporter John Markoff, gives a panoramic history of the difficult and changing connection between people and computers in Machines of Loving Grace. The rate of technological progress has risen substantially in recent years, returning this tough ethical dilemma with fresh and far more serious repercussions. Markoff traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem as he 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.
Markoff claims that we are on the eve of a technological revolution, and that robots will fundamentally alter the way we live. Developers must now create a clear boundary between what is human and what is robotic, or the delicate balance between them will be disturbed.
