Christopher Summerfield has one foot in the field neuroscience - studying the brains of humans, as Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford - and the other in AI research, as Research Director at the UK AI Safety Institute. Previously, he built intelligent systems at the pioneering Google DeepMind. He has won several awards, including the prestigious Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award in 2015. He is regularly invited to give keynote talks across the world. Christopher has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and book chapters and his academic book, Natural General Intelligence- How Understanding the Brain Can Help Us Build AI, was widely acclaimed. This is his first book for a general readership.
An engaging, insightful and panoramic survey of where we are, why we got here and what it means. A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times -- Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind As a leading authority in both computational neuroscience and the social impacts of AI, Christopher Summerfield is perfectly situated to explore the meaning and implications of these machines that are so uncannily like – and unlike – ourselves -- Brian Christian, co-author of Algorithms to Live by The unprecedented success of Large Language Models like ChatGPT took the AI world by surprise, and sent shock waves through silicon valley. We are now at a unique moment in human history, with powerful general-purpose AI tools available for the first time. But how do these weird tools work? How will they develop? And what does it mean for humanity? AI expert Chris Summerfield takes us on a tour of this astonishing new technology, and helps us to understand the issues it raises. You might choose to be alarmed, excited, or indifferent to LLMs, but you should read Chris’s book before you decide -- Mike Woolridge, author of The Road to Conscious Machines