Australia’s tiger quoll – as featured in Dan Werb’s Our Wild Familiars, out this monthShutterstock/Craig Dingle
It’s a hot month in London – in oh so many ways. Life, being alive and death are big themes in the new popular science books out in July, not to mention that small thing of being a human and all the messy feelings and sensory stuff that goes with it. Then there’s also AI filling the future – in ways that worry one of the world’s leading forensic scientists, as well as ethicists who are paid to think about this sort of thing. I’m looking forward to delving into the worlds of volcanoes and pharmacology, which look positively safe and stable in comparison…
Artificially Yours: Real friendship in a world of chatbots by Valerie Tiberius
Can friendship with a chatbot ever be as good as friendship with a gang of flesh-and-blood besties? Is there still and will there – can there – always be something about human friendships that will elude the smartest of simulations? Ethicist and University of Minnesota professor of philosophy Valerie Tiberius sets out to argue the human case. She defines the ideal friendship as an enjoyable, close relationship built on shared activities between people who care about each other for their own sake. It will be interesting to see where her book goes with this – especially since Shannon Vallor, author of The AI Mirror: How to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking, thinks it “provides a nuanced philosophical survey of the possibilities for human-AI relationships by highlighting their considerable risks and benefits”.
