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James Barrat

Documentary Filmmaker, Speaker and Author of 'Our Final Invention'
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Gender: Male
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Languages: English
Travels from: United States

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Biography Highlights

  • Time Magazine named author and filmmaker James Barrat one of 5 Very Smart People Who Think Artificial Intelligence Could Bring the Apocalypse due to his groundbreaking nonfiction bestseller, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era.

Biography

About James Barrat

Intelligence, Barrat contends, not strength or speed, is the superpower that enables humans to steer the future. Scientists around the world are developing machines whose intelligence grows exponentially, and will someday dwarf our own. Have we already plunged into an unwinnable intelligence race, with the future of humanity at stake?

As an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Barrat has made a career from introducing audiences to complex ideas in engaging and provocative ways. His films have set ratings records for National Geographic, Discovery, PBS, and other broadcasters in the US and Europe. Notable titles include the National Geographic Specials The Gospel of Judas (2006), Inside Jerusalem’s Holiest (2008), Herod’s Lost Tomb (2010), and The Rise of the Black Pharaohs (2014). For PBS Barrat created Spillover: Zika, Ebola and Beyond (2016) and the 90-minute feature-doc Facing Suicide (2022). In September 2024, Facing Suicide’s companion book will be printed by Penguin Random House. Barrat is currently at work on The Intelligence Explosion, an expose that shows how generative AI takes us closer to human level intelligence with mysterious and unpredictable emergent powers.

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Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the “smart” in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine. Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?

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Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the "smart" in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI's Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine. Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?
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