"Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style--thorough, yet riveting--famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old...

"We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy. None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind,...

Providing abundance is humanity's grandest challenge¿́¿this is a book about how we rise to meet it. We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions....

"Science fact, not science fiction, on the cutting-edge developments that are already changing the course of our future. Every day, scientists conduct pioneering experiments with the potential to transform how we live. Yet it isn't every you hear from the scientists themselves! Now, award-winning author Jim Al-Khalili and his team of top-notch experts explain how today's earthshaking discoveries will shape our world tomorrow--and beyond. The scientists...

K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology-the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment. Already, scientists have constructed prototypes...

"Editor Max Brockman introduces the work of some of today's brightest and most innovative young scientists in this fascinating and exciting collection of writings that describe the very boundaries of our knowledge. Future Science features nineteen young scientists, most of whom are presenting their innovative work and ideas to a general audience for the first time. Featured in this collection are William McEwan, a virologist, discussing his research...

"For however smart your Roomba or Alexa might seem, historically, robots have been fairly dumb. They are only able to do their jobs when given a narrow set of tasks, confined in a controlled environment, and overseen by a human operator. But things are changing. A new breed of robots is in development that will operate largely on their own. They'll drive on roads and sidewalks, ferry deliveries within buildings, stock shelves in stores, and coordinate...

"What jobs should be automated? How should our legal systems handle autonomous systems? How likely is the emergence of suprahuman intelligence? A.I. is the future of science, technology, and business--and there is no person better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark. What has A.I. brought us? Where will it lead us? The story of A.I. is the story of intelligence--of life processes as they evolve from bacteria (1.0) to humans...

"Search is as old as language. We've always needed to find something in the jumble of human creation. The first web was nothing more than passing verbal histories down the generations so others could find and remember how not to get eaten; the first search used the power of written language to build simple indexes in printed books, leading to the Dewey Decimal system and reverse indices in more modern times. Then digital happened. Besides having profound...