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How the technology that is revolutionising our world actually works, and what that means, from the Research Director at the UK government's AI Safety Institute

Stunning advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems. The march of this new technology is set to upturn our economies, challenge our democracies, and refashion society in unpredictable ways. We can expect these AI systems to soon be making autonomous decisions on the user's behalf, with transformative impact on everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work.

Can AI systems 'think', 'know' and 'understand'? Could they manipulate or deceive you, and if so, what might they make you do? Whose interests do they ultimately represent? And when will they be able to move beyond words and take actions for themselves in the real world? Ultimately, can we look forward to a technological utopia, or are we in the process of writing ourselves out of history? 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.