The Most Human Human
2012 • 322 pages
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
A playful, profound book that is not only a testament to one man's efforts to be deemed more human than a computer, but also a rollicking exploration of what it means to be human in the first place. “Terrific. ... Art and science meet an engaged mind and the friction produces real fire.” —The New Yorker Each year, the AI community convenes to administer the famous (and famously controversial) Turing test, pitting sophisticated software programs against humans to determine if a computer can “think.” The machine that most often fools the judges wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, strange and intriguing, for the “Most Human Human.” Brian Christian—a young poet with degrees in computer science and philosophy—was chosen to participate in a recent competition. This
Reviews with the most likes.
I really enjoyed this book. The framework is that the author wants to win the Most Human Human award at the annual Loebner Prize, a competition that is actually focused on the AI community. In preparation for this event he decides to investigate what it actually means to be human, with his research, conversations, and introspections comprising the actual bulk of the book. This idea - what it means to be human - takes the reader on a free-ranging journey, so much so that at times I actually stopped to think, “Wait, what is this book about?” Once I remembered the overall subject matter, the topics would make sense in the book; even though the author talks about things that seem unrelated, they all fit nicely together in the context of how they make us human (or less-than-human, which is more interesting). By the final chapter I was getting a little impatient for the end, which the author actually discusses in general at one point. Overall, very enjoyable.
