Publisher's Synopsis
For the first time in history, we are interacting with computer programmes so sophisticated that we think they're human beings. This is a remarkable feat of human ingenuity, but what does it say about our humanity? Are we really no better at being human than the machines we've created?
Computers are now on the brink of passing the Turing Test, the widely accepted threshold beyond which a machine can be said to be 'thinking' or 'intelligent' according to its ability to pass itself off as a human. In this brilliantly witty and inspiring investigation, Brian Christian explores first-hand the urgent moral and practical implications of this remarkable development. And in an era when so much digital communication is metaphorically - but also quite literally - a Turing Test, he explains how to be the most human humans that we can be.
Drawing on science, philosophy, literature and the arts, and touching on aspects of life as diverse as language, work, school, chess, speed-dating, art, video games, psychiatry and the law, The Most Human Human shows that far from being a threat to our humanity, computers provide a better means than ever before of understanding what it is.
