Ways of being : animals, plants, machines : the search for a planetary intelligence /
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings, beings of flesh, wood, stone and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in "artificial" intelligence. But as it approaches, it also gets weirder. Rather than a friend or helpma...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
[2022].
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| Edition: | First American edition. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings, beings of flesh, wood, stone and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in "artificial" intelligence. But as it approaches, it also gets weirder. Rather than a friend or helpmate, AI increasingly appears as something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us. At the same time, we're only just becoming aware of the other intelligences which have been with us all along, even if we've failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others, the animals, plants and natural systems that surround us are slowly revealing their complexity, agency and knowledge, just as the technologies we've built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction, and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics, to live better and more equitably with one another and the non-human world? |
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| Item Description: | "Originally published in 2022 by Allen Lane, Great Britain, as Ways of being : beyond human intelligence." |
| Physical Description: | xiv, 364 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780374601119 0374601119 |