"Artificial intelligence (AI) helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the 'smart' in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But artificial intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be racing towards our own annihilation, as the military, academia, and corporate advances in artificial intelligence may lead to an uncontrollable new lifeform far smarter and more powerful than we can imagine. Bringing together the ideas of experts in a thoroughly accessible way, this book explores how the convergence of current developments in technology may lead to a catastrophic outcome within the next few years"--Provided by publisher.

The busy child -- The two-minute problem -- Looking into the future -- The hard way -- Programs that write programs -- Four basic drives -- The intelligence explosion -- The point of no return -- The law of accelerating returns -- The Singularitarian -- A hard takeoff -- The last complication -- Unknowable by nature -- the end of the human era -- The cyber ecosystem -- AGI 2.0.