Toby’s three books on AI which are written for a general audience are available in, English, Chinese, Arabic, German, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish and Vietnamese.
The Shortest History of AI
Six ideas to understand artificial intelligence today.
Since Alan Turing first posed the question, ‘Can machines think?’, artificial intelligence has evolved from a speculative idea to a transformative force. The Shortest History of AI traces this evolution, from Ada Lovelace’s visionary work to IBM’s groundbreaking defeat of the chess world champion and the revolutionary emergence of ChatGPT. It also explores AI’s cultural journey, touching on classics such as Frankenstein, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Revealing how many ‘overnight’ successes were decades in the making, this accessible and illuminating book simplifies AI into six key ideas, equipping readers to understand where we’ve been – and where we’re headed.
‘This history of AI in six simple ideas is so informative and easy to digest. Essential reading’—Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
‘One of the world’s brightest minds takes on one of the world’s biggest topics … Delicious!’—Adam Spencer
Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI
Can we build moral machines? Toby Walsh, AI expert, examines the ethical issues we face in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is an essential part of our lives – for better or worse. It can be used to influence what we buy, who gets shortlisted for a job and even how we vote. Without AI, medical technology wouldn’t have come so far, we’d still be getting lost on backroads in our GPS-free cars, and smartphones wouldn’t be so, well, smart. But as we continue to build more intelligent and autonomous machines, what impact will this have on humanity and the planet?
Professor Toby Walsh, a world-leading researcher in the field of artificial intelligence, explores the ethical considerations and unexpected consequences AI poses – Is Alexa racist? Can robots have rights? What happens if a self-driving car kills someone? What limitations should we put on the use of facial recognition?
Machines Behaving Badly is a thought-provoking look at the increasing human reliance on robotics and the decisions that need to be made now to ensure the future of AI is as a force for good, not evil.
2062: The World that AI Made
2062 is the year by which we will have built machines as intelligent as us. This is what the majority of leading artificial intelligence and robotics experts now predict. But what will this future actually look like? When the quest to build intelligent machines has effectively been successful, how will life on this planet unfold?
In 2062, Professor Toby Walsh, a world-leader in the field of artificial intelligence and one of 100 ‘rock stars’ of Australia’s digital revolution, considers the impact AI will have on work, war, politics, economics, everyday human life and, indeed, human death.
Will automation take away jobs? Will robots become conscious and actually take over? Will we become immortal machines ourselves, uploading our brains to the cloud? How will political institutions adjust to the post-truth, post-privacy digitised world? What lies in store for homo digitalis – the people of the not-so-distant future who will be living amongst fully functioning artificial intelligence?
Based on a deep understanding of technology and its implications, 2062 describes the choices we need to make today to ensure that future remains bright.
It’s Alive!: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots
There are few other human inventions that are likely to have as large an impact on our lives as machines that can think . . . The steam engine liberated our muscles. The computer is set to liberate our minds.
The development of Artificial Intelligence is an adventure as bold and ambitious as any that humans have attempted. And the truth is that thinking machines are already an indispensable part of our lives. Without them, Google couldn’t answer your questions in a fraction of a second. Autonomous cars would exist only in science fiction. And your smartphone would be . . . just a phone. In countless ways, with every passing day, AI is shaping and reshaping our world.
But where will AI technologies take us in the future? Will thinking machines destroy our jobs? Could their intelligence surpass our own? Could the rise of AI threaten the very existence of humanity?
Leading researcher Toby Walsh takes us on a surprising and inspiring journey through the story of Artificial Intelligence – revealing how it is already transforming our societies, our economies and even ourselves – and makes ten fascinating predictions about what it will have achieved by the year 2050.
Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World (Fall 2023)
Artificially intelligent machines are set to play an increasingly important role in our lives. They will take the dirty tasks of life off our hands, as well as the dull, the difficult and the dangerous – which is a good thing.
But at the heart of AI is a fundamental deceit: its goal is to imitate human intelligence. Although AIs like ChatGPT are powerful and convincing, they are fakes. They lack true understanding, sentience, consciousness and common sense, the very traits that make our human intelligence so special. The phoniness of AIs is a great weakness, and should be of concern to everyone.
Can AI systems be creative? Can they be moral? What can we do to ensure they are not harmful? Will they ever develop consciousness – and if they do, what does this mean for humanity?
In this fascinating new book, leading AI expert and author Professor Toby Walsh explores the artificiality of artificial intelligence, and considers the impact it is having on society. The fakery of AI, he argues, threatens to blur the distinction between what is real and what is simulated. It might even throw into question the very essence of what it means to be human. The stakes, therefore, are as high as they could be.
Toby, thank you so much for your presentation yesterday which was worth the price of admission alone (and more). I am grateful to have learnt about your work and look forward to reading your books with great interest. I appreciate your work and its significance to our time and particularly appreciate your role as a translator for us non-technical folk. Thanks again for your work.
Liz Chase
Head of Innovation and UX, Leo Cussen Centre for LawImage Credit: TU Berlin/Press/Christian Kielmann. All images are used with the permission of their rightful copyright owners.
