2062

What does a world of smart machines actually look like? AI expert Toby Walsh predicts the state of work, war, politics, economics, everyday life and death in the not-too-distant future, when we will live with machines as intelligent as us.

‘We’ve had the run of planet earth for the last few hundred thousand years: this amazing blue green dot, revolving around a rather typical star on a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way. We owe it to our child homo digitalis to get the next few decades right.’

2062 is the year by which we will have built machines as intelligent as us. This is what leading AI and robotics experts predict. But what will this future actually look like? When the quest to build intelligent machines has been successful, how will life on this planet unfold?

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.

About the Author

Toby Walsh is one of the world’s leading researchers in Artificial Intelligence, and has spent his life dreaming about and researching machines that might think. He is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales and leads a research group at Data61, Australia’s Centre of Excellence for ICT Research. He has been elected a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of AI for his contributions to the field, and has won the prestigious Humboldt research award. He has previously held research positions in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Sweden.