Talking to Robots: A Brief Guide to Our Human-Robot Futures – Duncan David Ewing (2019)

This English-language book explores the robot and artificial-intelligence systems being built and imagined today and asks what they reveal about their human creators. David Ewing Duncan considers whether robots will usher in a fantastic future or destroy us, drawing on the ideas of physicist Brian Greene, futurist Kevin Kelly, inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, filmmaker Tiffany Shlain and other thinkers. The book moves from present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to possible future intimacy bots and machines that take people’s jobs, covering robot drivers, doctor bots, politician bots, warrior bots, sex bots, synthetic-biology bots, dystopian bots and ultimately God Bot, as described by Brian Greene. These scenarios are informed by discussions with engineers, scientists, artists, philosophers and others who share their hopes and fears about robots. Alongside reporting on bot technology and its history, the book examines current social and ethical issues and considers how people and societies have responded to new technologies in the past. It describes how robots work while focusing primarily on possible human-robot futures, both real and imagined.