The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive

Brian Christian

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Mar 1, 2011 - Psychology - 320 pages

A playful, profound book that is not only a testament to one man's efforts to be deemed more human than a computer, but also a rollicking exploration of what it means to be human in the first place.

“Terrific. ... Art and science meet an engaged mind and the friction produces real fire.” —The New Yorker

Each year, the AI community convenes to administer the famous (and famously controversial) Turing test, pitting sophisticated software programs against humans to determine if a computer can “think.” The machine that most often fools the judges wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, strange and intriguing, for the “Most Human Human.”
 
Brian Christian—a young poet with degrees in computer science and philosophy—was chosen to participate in a recent competition. This 

About the author

BRIAN CHRISTIAN has published work in The Atlantic, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and many literary and scientific publications. He has been featured on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” NPR’s “Radiolab,” and “The Charlie Rose Show,” and has lectured at Google, Microsoft, the London School of Economics, and elsewhere. An award-winning poet, Christian holds a degree in philosophy and computer science from Brown University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. The Most Human Human, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, has been translated into nine languages. Christian lives in Philadelphia.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
• Author: Brian Christian
• Edition: unabridged
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011
• ISBN: 0385533071, 9780385533072
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / Movements / Humanism; Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition; Technology & Engineering / Robotics