The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs

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Description

'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before.

A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die.

They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago - and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.

Reviews

'Persuasive ... the ever-erudite host of the terrific Talking Politics podcast ... ranges far and wide, from hunter gatherers to Elon Musk, from the wisdom of juries to the (terrifying) implications of autonomous weapons systems' - Tim Adams

'Runciman's erudition is formidable ... a wide-ranging history of the modern state and an exploration of how AI technology may change the world [from] one of our leading public intellectuals' - Jason Cowley

'Compelling ... David Runciman makes salutary arguments [about] the most urgent problem we face' - Blake Smith

'Quirky, meditational, disturbing ... original thinking' - Sherelle Jacobs

'Praise for David Runciman: 'A clear and forceful writer' - Financial Times

Author Bio

David Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the former Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies. His previous books for Profile include Confronting Leviathan, Where Power Stops and How Democracy Ends. He writes regularly about politics for the London Review of Books and hosted the widely acclaimed weekly podcast Talking Politics.