Book: The Future in the Present

This book attempts to make some sense of the technological possibilities that await us in an increasingly automated world—one where artificial intelligences (AIs) make more and more decisions for us.

Will they bring us closer to the wondrous future imagined in, say, Star Trek, with its holodecks and material prosperity for all? Or will we fall into darkness and find ever more ways to destroy one another, like in Black Mirror or Dr. Strangelove?

As the nuclear age has shown us, there are deadly consequences if we get this wrong. The more capable and useful a new tool is for good, the worse and more destructive it will be when turned to the wrong ends. Ever since early man began setting fires and building weapons, we’ve known this principle. The same fires that kept our ancestors warm (and enabled them to see at night and cook their food) also destroyed entire forests. The same dynamite that lets us mine the earth and blast new paths through solid rock can level entire cities, and the same computers that give us such convenience can allow hackers and identity thieves to take over our lives.

Science fiction poses questions, and history can go some way towards answering them. In this book, we’ll be exploring several reasons for this, and preparing you, the reader, for a future that’s both more uncertain than ever but far more exciting to explore and live in.

It’s on this journey that we’ll discover causes for both optimism and pessimism (and learn why we’ll always need both), the need for a high view of humanity that science and engineering alone cannot provide, and how we can choose the good and avoid the bad so that life gets as good as it can, for the most people possible