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The Handover

How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs

David Runciman
In this thought-provoking volume David Runciman draws parallels between artificial intelligence and the states and corporations that have dominated our lives over the last three centuries. Demonstrating how their superhuman powers have transformed our condition, bringing financial and health benefits but also exploitation and environmental degradation, he explores what the future might hold, arguing that in a world of machines we should question ‘which of them gives us the best chance of still being us’.
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Product information:
  • Publisher: Profile
  • Year: 2023
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 336pp
  • Illustrated: Yes
  • Dimensions: 240x160mm
  • ISBN: 9781788163675
  • Condition: New
  • Weight: 0.5kg
Product code:
541888
Product information
Full publisher description
'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before.

A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die.

They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago - and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.
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