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north american monsters Monster! Monster!: A Survey of the North American Monster Scene by Betty GarnerBy: Garner, Betty ISBN: 97808883935719 Binding: Trade Paper Size: 8. 5" X 5. 5" Pages: 192 Photos: 0 Illustrations: 0 Publication Date: 1995 PR Highlights: A Survey of the North American Monster Scene. PHOTO Highlights: Numerous b w line drawings & photos throughout. Description: For centuries, man has passed down stories about strange, unknown creatures inhabiting the forests, lakes and oceans of North America. Witnesses have come forth to sign sworn
By: Garner, Betty
ISBN: 97808883935719
Binding: Trade Paper
Size: 8.5" X 5.5"
Pages: 192
Photos: 0
Illustrations: 0
Publication Date: 1995
PR Highlights: A Survey of the North American Monster Scene.
PHOTO Highlights: Numerous b/w line drawings & photos throughout.
Description: For centuries, man has passed down stories about strange, unknown creatures inhabiting the forests, lakes and oceans of North America. Witnesses have come forth to sign sworn testimonies as to the truth of their reports. Films have been offered to authorities as the real thing. And yet, no carcasses or live specimens have been found--the search for proof continues. Offering readers of all ages a balance of myth and fact, Monster! Monster! Gives the complete story of creatures alleged to exist in North America. From pre-historic time to the present, from sea serpents to Sasquatch, the author takes readers on a journey examining the arguments for and against the existence of a whole spectrum of beasts. A must read for those who want to know more about monsters--real, half-real or imagined.
Author Biography:
Betty Sanders Garner is a confirmed monster-lover and has been collecting monster information for nearly twenty years. This is her second book on the subject, her first being Canada's Monsters. Garner's fascination with the subject and a desire to provoke thought and discussion make Monster! Monster! An exciting and intriguing read.
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4.1 ★★★★★
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★★★★★ 5
A well-written but perhaps too late warning
Format: Kindle
I wavered between 4 stars or 5 but ended up with 5 despite some reservations. The author has put a great deal of work into this book, which includes interviews with and intriguing anecdotes about most of the leading figures in the AI revolution. I did not know, for example, that the term “singularity” was coined as an analogy to the event horizon of a black hole – the point beyond which we cannot see the future. This is not the deepest or most technical book on this topic: that award goes to Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence. It also ignores the short to medium term issue posed by even sub-human AI -- the millions of job losses (hundreds of millions globally) likely to occur in the next 10 to 20 years. It focuses instead on the risks of super-intelligent AI, AI that exceeds – soon by orders of magnitude – human level intelligence. It is nevertheless a superb book for its intended purpose: raising public awareness of the existential risk posed by this development. AI, the author says, is the cuckoo chick in the nest. The AI community built the nest and is now busily feeding this strange chick. Mesmerized by its open mouth, they ignore the mortal danger it poses to their own progeny. Even when they know what will happen in the end, they cannot quite believe it. Only intervention by the non-technical public has any chance at all of short circuiting this process.
Against these many good points, I would have liked to hear the author’s take on what I think is the critical question overlooked both by Kurzweilian optimists and AI skeptics. Both the notion that we will somehow “merge” with AI and the notion that AI will eat us alive depend on the assumption that silicon-based intelligence can have conscious awareness. We certainly wouldn’t want to merge with anything that would result in our becoming permanently unconscious, and Barrat repeatedly assumes that AI will be “self-aware,” a state that first requires being “aware,” that is phenomenally conscious. The unasked question is whether AI, as it is currently being developed, can have that capacity. IBM’s Watson may be good at Jeopardy but there is no reason to believe that it knows it is good at Jeopardy, or feels good at being good at it. By contrast, honey bees appear to become depressed when they are shaken. This suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong about the notion that current AI, as it becomes more intelligent, will “automatically” become conscious. The best current theory of consciousness – integrated intelligence theory – suggests that a computer can become conscious but only if it is wired very differently from the ones we currently have.
Nevertheless, this is still an excellent book, so in the end I thought the 5 star rating was deserved.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2015
★★★★★ 4
Thought-provoking though not always convincing
Format: Hardcover
I originally posted a version of this review on my blog Quicksilber and am posting it here as well as I think the book merits broad notice:
In a small irony, my writing about James Barrat's Our Final Invention has been slowed by a balky Internet connection. In my experience, glitches have become considerably more common as computers have become more powerful and complicated. Perhaps such growing glitchiness suggests artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI) are more likely to get seriously out of control someday, though it might also be a hint that AGI and ASI are going to be harder to achieve than expected by either techno-optimists such as Ray Kurzweil or techno-pessimists such as James Barrat.
Barrat's goal in this book is to convince readers that AGI and ASI are likely to occur in the near future (the next couple of decades or so) and, more to the point, likely to be extremely dangerous. In fact, he repeatedly expresses doubt as to whether humanity is going to survive its imminent encounter with a higher intelligence.
I find him more convincing in arguing that ASI would carry significant risks than I do in his take on its feasibility and imminence. Barrat aptly points out that building safeguards into AI is a poorly developed area of research (and something few technologists have seen as a priority); that there are strong incentives in national and corporate competition to develop AI quickly rather than safely; and that much relevant research is weapons-related and distinctly not aimed at ensuring the systems will be harmless to humans.
The book becomes less convincing when it hypes current or prospective advances and downplays the challenges and uncertainties of actually constructing an AGI, let alone an ASI. (Barrat suggests that once you get AGI, it will quickly morph into ASI, which may or may not be true.) For instance, in one passage, after acknowledging that "brute force" techniques have not replicated everything the human brain does, he states:
>>But consider a few of the complex systems today's supercomputers routinely model: weather systems, 3-D nuclear detonations, and molecular dynamics for manufacturing. Does the human brain contain a similar magnitude of complexity, or an order of magnitude higher? According to all indications, it's in the same ballpark.<< Me: To model something and to reproduce it are not the same thing. Simulating weather or nuclear detonations is not equal to creating those real-world phenomena, and similarly a computer containing a detailed model of the brain would not necessarily be thinking like a brain or acting on its thoughts.
A big problem for AI, and one that gets little notice in this book, is that nobody has any idea how to program conscious awareness into a machine. That doesn't mean it can never be done, but it does raise doubts about assertions that it will or must occur as more complex circuits get laid down on chips in coming decades. Barrat often refers to AGIs and ASIs as "self aware" and his concerns center on such systems, having awakened, deciding that they have other objectives than the ones humans have programmed into them. One can imagine unconscious "intelligent" agents causing many problems (through glitches or relentless pursuit of some ill-considered programmed objective) but plotting against humanity seems like a job for an entity that knows that it and humans both exist.
Interestingly, though, Barrat offers the following dark scenario and sliver of hope:
>>I think our Waterloo lies in the foreseeable future, in the AI of tomorrow and the nascent AGI due out in the next decade or two. Our survival, if it is possible, may depend on, among other things, developing AGI with something akin to consciousness and human understanding, even friendliness, built in. That would require, at a minimum, understanding intelligent machines in a fine-grained way, so there'd be no surprises.<< Me: Note that some AI experts, such as Jeff Hawkins, have argued the opposite--that the very lack of human-like desires, such as for power and status, is why AI systems won't turn against their makers. It would be a not-so-small irony if efforts to make AIs more like us make them more dangerous.
Our Final Invention is a thought-provoking and valuable book. Even if its alarmism is overstated, as I suspect and hope, there is no denying that the subject Barrat addresses is one in which there is very little that can be said with confidence, and in which the consequences of being wrong are very high indeed.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2014
★★★★★ 5
all driven by artificial super intelligence (ASI)
Format: Hardcover
You are peering inside a black hole at a "point" beyond which you cannot see and where no one knows what exists. The point represents a period of time technologically known as Singularity. Even light cannot escape from the point and on the other side it is known only that there is a profound self replicating intelligence greater than our own, all driven by artificial super intelligence (ASI).
Physicist Stephen Hawking writes that "In contrast with our intellect, computers double their performance every eighteen months. So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world".
Computer scientist and professor Vernon Vinge writes that "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create super human intelligence. Shortly after the human era will be ended".
Our Final Invention is 267 pages of authoritative manuscript that is compelling, fascinating and beyond the fright stage.
The book's author on numerous occasions refers to "we" as if there exists a unified collective engaged in artificial general intelligence(AGI) or artificial super intelligence (ASI). The reality is that some 56 nations are currently in different stages of arcane artificial intelligence designs. They include antagonists such as North Korea, Iran and suicide regimes from the Middle East. Russia, China and the U.S. are the biggest players as is Israel.
The author believes that super computers fueled by nanotechnology will combine to produce ASI trillions of times more powerful than any human academic or intellectual resources. ASI has the potential to eliminate hunger, poverty, disease and even mortality but disruptions of global economies and politics will be in evidence as balance of powers are shifted. Unemployment dynamics will infect bank tellers, retail clerks,
travel agents, loan officers stock brokers....
Computer software designs are so complex, even incomprehensible, that failures are inevitable. The 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima were all designed by highly qualified professionals but with complex infrastructures. Under Singularity as computer speeds double with frequency while human intelligence is unchanged, perhaps the musings of Hawking and Vinge will prove to be prescient.
Our Final Invention is 267 pages of a very dark subject which not even a trace of a happy Betty Grable ending is to be found. My time has expired. Perhaps the final words were well expressed by Jaan Tallin, cofounder of Skype: 'A hard-hitting book about the most important topic of this century and possibly beyond---the issue of whether our species can survive. I wish it was science fiction but I know it's not'!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2016
★★★★★ 5
Gripping and Informative, a Must-read
Format: Hardcover
As someone who struggles to finish books in their entirety, I found Our Final Invention by James Barrat highly readable, deeply informative, and utterly gripping. The book contains a powerful message: through competition, distrust, desire and curiosity, humans will inevitably create an artificial intelligence (AI) that rivals or surpasses our own. Thus, it is wise and necessary to invest now in mitigation efforts and potential safeguards -- increased research and advocacy for AI risk and, most importantly, producing friendly AI.
Barrat covers a lot of ground, but his main argument is summarized as follows: Currently, we humans regularly utilize narrow AI technology (technology capable of achieving specific, programmed goals through unassisted human computing -- Siri, Google search, IBM's Watson, etc). We are also experimenting with "black box" tools and techniques (programs where inputs and outputs are understood and measurable, but the processes in between aren't -- genetic algorithms/programming and software that writes better software) and artificial neural networking (ANN), as seen through efforts to reverse engineer the human brain. And, below the surface, there is an ongoing race between world powers (driven mainly by national security, defense, and international business interests) and guided by AI developers to develop and achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- human-level artificial intelligence. The problem is that once AGI is achieved it will be very difficult to manage, and may very well result in the manifestation of artificial super intelligence (ASI) -- greater than human-level intelligence.
ASI could theoretically become thousands of times smarter than the smartest human being alive. It won't think like us, won't want to be ruled by us, and, most crucially, it won't want to be turned off. In fact, ASI would likely regard us as potential fuel for its quest to duplicate and improve itself exponentially in order to achieve its goals.
Throughout the book, Barrat refers to interesting psychological phenomena and concepts (such as the normalcy bias), while drawing on personal experiences, historic events, and interviews with computer programmers, inventors and philosophers, to tactfully illustrate how progress in AI development is dangerously rapid. Adequate checks and balances are not in place to deal with a non-ideal intelligence explosion or hard take-off (AGI quickly leading to ASI).
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about both human beings and the advancement of machines. I suspect that the prominence of AI, as a research field and topic for discussion, will only increase in time (it already has in recent years -- drones, smart technology, Wall Street high frequency trading (HFT), financial modeling), making Our Final Invention a valuable guide or stepping stone for anyone trying to understand our world and the path of the future.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2014
★★★★★ 5
Great book
Format: Hardcover
We love the FGTEEV books!
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Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2026