Corporations & 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 & more alien than we can imagine. Thru profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs & groundbreaking AI systems, James Barrat's Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? Will they allow us to?

    Morris Mano, Charles R. Kime - Prentice Hall (2007) - Hardback - 678 pages - ISBN 013198926XFeaturing a strong emphasis on the fundamentals underlying contemporary logic design using hardware description languages, synthesis, and verification, this book focuses on the ever-evolving applications of basic computer design concepts with strong connections to real-world technology.Treatment of logic design, digital system design, and computer design.Ideal for self-study by engineers and computer scientists.

    What hope do we have against superintelligent machines? But we aren't really on the path to developing intelligent machines. In fact, we don't even know where that path might be.A tech entrepreneur and pioneering research scientist working at the forefront of natural language processing, Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to show how far we are from superintelligence, and what it would take to get there. Ever since Alan Turing, AI enthusiasts have equated artificial intelligence with human intelligence. This is a profound mistake. AI works on inductive reasoning, crunching data sets to predict outcomes. But humans don't correlate data sets: we make conjectures informed by context and experience. Human intelligence is a web of best guesses, given what we know about the world. We haven't a clue how to program this kind of intuitive reasoning, known as abduction. Yet it is the heart of common sense. That's why Alexa can't understand what you are asking, and why AI can only take us so far.Larson argues that AI hype is both bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we want to make real progress, we will need to start by more fully appreciating the only true intelligence we know--our own.

    This book is a result of a quest. A quest to uncover what habits can be cultivated to become a better software engineer.

    But can machines really think? Is the mind just a complicated computer program? Introducing Artificial Intelligence focuses on the issues behind one of science's most difficult problems.

    In today’s economy, we have far too much dismay along with our amazement, and technology bears some of the blame. In this combination of memoir, business strategy guide, and call to action, Tim O'Reilly, Silicon Valley’s leading intellectual and the founder of O’Reilly Media, explores the upside and the potential downsides of today's WTF? technologies. What is the future when an increasing number of jobs can be performed by intelligent machines instead of people, or done only by people in partnership with those machines? What happens to our consumer based societies—to workers and to the companies that depend on their purchasing power? Is income inequality and unemployment an inevitable consequence of technological advancement, or are there paths to a better future? What will happen to business when technology-enabled networks and marketplaces are better at deploying talent than traditional companies? How should companies organize themselves to take advantage of these new tools? What’s the future of education when on-demand learning outperforms traditional institutions? How can individuals continue to adapt and retrain? Will the fundamental social safety nets of the developed world survive the transition, and if not, what will replace them? O'Reilly is "the man who can really can make a whole industry happen," according to Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet (Google.) His genius over the past four decades has been to identify and to help shape our response to emerging technologies with world shaking potential—the World Wide Web, Open Source Software, Web 2.0, Open Government data, the Maker Movement, Big Data, and now AI. O’Reilly shares the techniques he's used at O’Reilly Media  to make sense of and predict past innovation waves and applies those same techniques to provide a framework for thinking about how today’s world-spanning platforms and networks, on-demand services, and artificial intelligence are changing the nature of business, education, government, financial markets, and the economy as a whole. He provides tools for understanding how all the parts of modern digital businesses work together to create marketplace advantage and customer value, and why ultimately, they cannot succeed unless their ecosystem succeeds along with them.The core of the book's call to action is an exhortation to businesses to DO MORE with technology rather than just using it to cut costs and enrich their shareholders. Robots are going to take our jobs, they say. O'Reilly replies, “Only if that’s what we ask them to do! Technology is the solution to human problems, and we won’t run out of work till we run out of problems." Entrepreneurs need to set their sights on how they can use big data, sensors, and AI to create amazing human experiences and the economy of the future, making us all richer in the same way the tools of the first industrial revolution did. Yes, technology can eliminate labor and make things cheaper, but at its best, we use it to do things that were previously unimaginable! What is our poverty of imagination? What are the entrepreneurial leaps that will allow us to use the technology of today to build a better future, not just a more efficient one? Whether technology brings the WTF? of wonder or the WTF? of dismay isn't inevitable. It's up to us!

    Freeman, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyLearning OpenCV puts you in the middle of the rapidly expanding field of computer vision. Written by the creators of the free open source OpenCV library, this book introduces you to computer vision and demonstrates how you can quickly build applications that enable computers to "see" and make decisions based on that data. Computer vision is everywhere-in security systems, manufacturing inspection systems, medical image analysis, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and more. It stitches Google maps and Google Earth together, checks the pixels on LCD screens, and makes sure the stitches in your shirt are sewn properly. OpenCV provides an easy-to-use computer vision framework and a comprehensive library with more than 500 functions that can run vision code in real time.Learning OpenCV will teach any developer or hobbyist to use the framework quickly with the help of hands-on exercises in each chapter. This book includes:A thorough introduction to OpenCV Getting input from cameras Transforming images Segmenting images and shape matching Pattern recognition, including face detection Tracking and motion in 2 and 3 dimensions 3D reconstruction from stereo vision Machine learning algorithms Getting machines to see is a challenging but entertaining goal. Whether you want to build simple or sophisticated vision applications, Learning OpenCV is the book you need to get started.

    Essentially three books in one: provides thorough introductions to the PHP language and the MySQL database, and shows you how these two technologies can be effectively integrated to build powerful websites. Provides over 500 code examples, including real-world tasks such as creating an auto-login feature, sending HTML-formatted e-mail, testing password guessability, and uploading files via a web interface. Updated for MySQL 5, includes new chapters introducing triggers, stored procedures, and views.

    It provides a high-productivity programming model that promotes cleaner code architecture, test-driven development, and powerful extensibility, combined with all the benefits of ASP.NET.ASP.NET MVC 4 contains a number of significant advances over previous versions. New mobile and desktop templates (employing adaptive rendering) are included together with support for jQuery Mobile for the first time. New display modes allow your application to select views based on the browser that's making the request while Code Generation Recipes for Visual Studio help you auto-generate project-specific code for a wide variety of situtations including NuGet support.In this fourth edition, the core model-view-controller (MVC) architectural concepts are not simply explained or discussed in isolation, but are demonstrated in action. You'll work through an extended tutorial to create a working e-commerce web application that combines ASP.NET MVC with the latest C# language features and unit-testing best practices. By gaining this invaluable, practical experience, you'll discover MVC's strengths and weaknesses for yourself--and put your best-learned theory into practice.The book's authors, Steve Sanderson and Adam Freeman, have both watched the growth of ASP.NET MVC since its first release. Steve is a well-known blogger on the MVC Framework and a member of the Microsoft Web Platform and Tools team. Adam started designing and building web applications 15 years ago and has been responsible for some of the world's largest and most ambitious projects. You can be sure you are in safe hands.

    In the beginning was Josh Levine, an idealistic programming genius who dreamed of wresting control of the market from the big exchanges that, again and again, gave the giant institutions an advantage over the little guy. Levine created a computerized trading hub named Island where small traders swapped stocks, and over time his invention morphed into a global electronic stock market that sent trillions in capital through a vast jungle of fiber-optic cables. By then, the market that Levine had sought to fix had turned upside down, birthing secretive exchanges called dark pools and a new species of trading machines that could think, and that seemed, ominously, to be slipping the control of their human masters. Dark Pools is the fascinating story of how global markets have been hijacked by trading robots--many so self-directed that humans can't predict what they'll do next.

    We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

    With few exceptions, existing books are overly technical, only dedicate a single chapter to website vulnerabilities or don't include any real world examples. This book is different.Using publicly disclosed vulnerabilities, Web Hacking 101 explains common web vulnerabilities and will show you how to start finding vulnerabilities and collecting bounties. With over 30 examples, the book covers topics like:HTML InjectionCross site scripting (XSS)Cross site request forgery (CSRF)Open RedirectsRemote Code Execution (RCE)Application Logicand more...Each example includes a classification of the attack, a report link, the bounty paid, easy to understand description and key takeaways. After reading this book, your eyes will be opened to the wide array of vulnerabilities that exist and you'll likely never look at a website or API the same way.

    If you've been put in charge of implementing cloud computing, this straightforward, plain-English guide clears up the confusion and helps you get your plan in place.You'll learn how cloud computing enables you to run a more green IT infrastructure, and access technology-enabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud") without having to understand, manage, or invest in the technology infrastructure that supports them. You'll also find out what you need to consider when implementing a plan, how to handle security issues, and more.Cloud computing is a way for businesses to take advantage of storage and virtual services through the Internet, saving money on infrastructure and support This book provides a clear definition of cloud computing from the utility computing standpoint and also addresses security concerns Offers practical guidance on delivering and managing cloud computing services effectively and efficiently Presents a proactive and pragmatic approach to implementing cloud computing in any organization Helps IT managers and staff understand the benefits and challenges of cloud computing, how to select a service, and what's involved in getting it up and running Highly experienced author team consults and gives presentations on emerging technologies Cloud Computing For Dummies gets straight to the point, providing the practical information you need to know.

    Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose--eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize--puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness. He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his little finger told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the reader on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, the structure of the brain, and scores of other subjects. The Emperor's New Mind will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in modern physics and its relation to philosophical issues, as well as to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and those on either side of the AI debate.

    It’s not only blue-collar jobs at stake. Millions of educated knowledge workers—writers, paralegals, assistants, medical technicians—are threatened by accelerating advances in artificial intelligence. The industrial revolution shifted workers from farms to factories. In the first era of automation, machines relieved humans of manually exhausting work. Today, Era Two of automation continues to wash across the entire services-based economy that has replaced jobs in agriculture and manufacturing. Era Three, and the rise of AI, is dawning. Smart computers are demonstrating they are capable of making better decisions than humans. Brilliant technologies can now decide, learn, predict, and even comprehend much faster and more accurately than the human brain, and their progress is accelerating. Where will this leave lawyers, nurses, teachers, and editors?In Only Humans Need Apply, Thomas Hayes Davenport and Julia Kirby reframe the conversation about automation, arguing that the future of increased productivity and business success isn’t either human or machine. It’s both. The key is augmentation, utilizing technology to help humans work better, smarter, and faster. Instead of viewing these machines as competitive interlopers, we can see them as partners and collaborators in creative problem solving as we move into the next era. The choice is ours.