num_pages: 303
description: The Most Human Human is a provocative exuberant and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can think.Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing the Turing Test convenes a panel of judges who pose questionsranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrumsto hidden contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and which is a computer. The machine that most often fools the panel wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize bizarre and intriguing for the Most Human Human.In 2008 the top AI program came short of passing the Turing Test by just one astonishing vote. In 2009 Brian Christian was chosen to participate and he set out to make sure Homo sapiens would prevail.The authors quest to be deemed more human than a computer opens a window onto our own nature. Interweaving modern phenomena like customer service chatbots and men using programmed dialogue to pick up women in bars with insights from fields as diverse as chess psychiatry and the law Brian Christian examines the philosophical biological and moral issues raised by the Turing Test.One central definition of human has been a being that could reason. If computers can reason what does that mean for the special place we reserve for humanity?
language: English
title: The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group