‘Tis the season for catching up on all the interesting books, videos, podcasts and articles you didn’t have time to get through during the year.
To help you make the most of your precious holiday time, we’ve put together our shortlist for the best books, podcasts and videos on emerging tech that you may have missed in 2018.
BOOKS
2062: THE WORLD THAT AI MADE BY TOBY WALSH
In 2062, Toby Walsh considers the impact AI will have on work, war, politics, economics, everyday human life and, indeed, human death. Will robots become conscious? Will automation take away jobs? Will we become immortal machines ourselves, uploading our brains to the cloud?
What lies in store for homo digitalis – the people of the not-so-distant future who will be living amongst fully functioning artificial intelligence? In the tradition of Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, 2062 describes the choices we need to make today to ensure that future remains bright.
Order here.
MADE BY HUMANS: THE AI CONDITION BY ELLEN BROAD
Artificial intelligence can be all too human: quick to judge, capable of error, vulnerable to bias. It’s made by humans, after all. Humans make decisions about the laws and standards, the tools, the ethics in this new world. Who benefits. Who gets hurt.
Made by Humans explores our role and responsibilities in automation. Roaming from Australia to the UK and the US, elite data expert Ellen Broad talks to world leaders in AI about what we need to do next. It is a personal, thought-provoking examination of humans as data and humans as the designers of systems that are meant to help us.
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ELON MUSK: TESLA, SPACEX AND THE QUEST FOR A FANTASTIC FUTURE BY ASHLEE VANCE
Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, who sold one of his Internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits.
Vance uses Musk's story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition?
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BAD BLOOD: SECRETS AND LIES IN A SILICON VALLEY STARTUP BY JOHN CARREYROU
One of Bill Gates' "5 Books I Loved in 2018".
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup 'unicorn' promised to revolutionise the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier.
Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: the technology didn't work.
For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. John Carreyrou tells the story of Theranos, and encourages us to consider the possible repercussions of our blind faith in a small group of brilliant individuals.
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MACHINE, PLATFORM, CROWD: HARNESSING OUR DIGITAL FUTURE BY ANDREW MCAFEE & ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON
From the authors of the best-selling The Second Machine Age, a leader’s guide to success in a rapidly changing economy.
Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson know what it takes to master this digital-powered shift: we must rethink the integration of minds and machines, of products and platforms, and of the core and the crowd. The balance now favours the second element of the pair, with massive implications for how we run our companies and live our lives. McAfee and Brynjolfsson deliver a penetrating analysis of a new world and a toolkit for thriving in it.
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PODCASTS
TED TALKS TECHNOLOGY
Some of the world's leading inventors and researchers share demos, breakthroughs and visions onstage at the TED conference, TEDx events and partner events around the world.
Listen here.
WITHOUT FAIL
Candid conversations with people who have done hard things: what worked, what didn't and why. Hosted by Alex Blumberg.
Listen here.
AI AUSTRALIA
Hosted by Churchill Club panelists, James Wilson and Nigel Dalton. In-depth conversations with technology leaders, academics, and AI professionals about all things artificial intelligence. They explore a broad range of topics including AI strategy, technology and ethics providing valuable insights for Australian businesses at all stages of AI adoption.
Listen here.
VIDEOS
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AI is massively transforming our world, but there's one thing it cannot do: love. In a visionary talk, computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee details how the US and China are driving a deep learning revolution -- and shares a blueprint for how humans can thrive in the age of AI by harnessing compassion and creativity.
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Once your smart devices can talk to you, who else are they talking to? Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu wanted to find out -- so they outfitted Hill's apartment with 18 different internet-connected devices and built a special router to track how often they contacted their servers and see what they were reporting back.
