Future Humans

"Evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon draws on the explosion of discoveries in recent years to examine the future evolution of our species. Combining knowledge of our past with current trends, Solomon offers convincing evidence that evolutionary forces still affect us today. But how will modernization--including longer lifespans, changing diets, global travel, and widespread use of medicine and contraceptives--affect our evolutionary future?" --publisher description.

What is transhumanism? What is AI? How are scientists developing ways to reach immortality? And should we even want to live forever? These questions are tackled as part of the What's the Issue? series - aimed at pre-teen and teens tackling current subjects, with a focus on critical thinking and debate, and forming one's own informed opinions.

A New York Times bestselling author and tech columnist's counter-intuitive guide to staying relevant - and employable - in the machine age by becoming irreplaceably human. It's not a future scenario any more. We've been taught that to compete with automation and AI, we'll have to become more like the machines themselves, building up technical skills like coding. But, there's simply no way to keep up. What if all the advice is wrong? And what do we need to do instead to become futureproof? We tend to think of automation as a blue-collar phenomenon that will affect truck drivers, factory workers, and other people with repetitive manual jobs. But it's much, much broader than that. Lawyers are being automated out of existence. Last year, JPMorgan Chase built a piece of software called COIN, which uses machine learning to review complicated contracts and documents. It used to take the firm's lawyers more than 300,000 hours every year to review all of those documents. Now, it takes a few seconds, and requires just one human to run the program. Doctors are being automated out of existence, too. Last summer, a Chinese tech company built a deep learning algorithm that diagnosed brain cancer and other diseases faster and more accurately than a team of 15 top Chinese doctors. Kevin Roose has spent the past few years studying the question of how people, communities, and organisations adapt to periods of change, from the Industrial Revolution to the present. And the insight that is sweeping through Silicon Valley as we speak -- that in an age dominated by machines, it's human skills that really matter - is one of the more profound and counter-intuitive ideas he's discovered. It's the antidote to the doom-and-gloom worries many people feel when they think about AI and automation. And it's something everyone needs to hear. In nine accessible, prescriptive chapters, Roose distills what he has learned about how we will survive the future, that the way to become futureproof is to become incredibly, irreplaceably human.

Forget worries about cloning people. In the future, technological advances will bring far more meaningful and controversial changes to our offspring. As scientists rapidly improve their ability to identify, screen and manipulate genes, people will want to protect their future children from diseases, help them live longer and even influence their looks and their abilities. Stock, an expert on the implications of recent advances in reproductive biology, clearly shows that neither governments, nor religious groups will be able to stop the coming trend of choosing an embryo's genes, and that there is little point in even trying.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The national bestselling author of The God Equation traverses the frontiers of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and technology to offer a stunning vision of man's future in space, from settling Mars to traveling to distant galaxies. “Amazing … Kaku is in smooth perfect control of it the entire time.” —The Christian Science Monitor We are entering a new Golden Age of space exploration. With irrepressible enthusiasm and a deep understanding of the cutting-edge research in space travel, world-renowned physicist and futurist Dr. Michio Kaku presents a compelling vision of how humanity may develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. He reveals the developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology that may allow us to terraform and build habitable cities on Mars and beyond. He then journeys out of our solar system and discusses how new technologies such as nanoships, laser sails, and fusion rockets may actually make interstellar travel a possibility. We travel beyond our galaxy, and even beyond our universe, as Kaku investigates some of the hottest topics in science today, including warp drive, wormholes, hyperspace, parallel universes, and the multiverse. Ultimately, he shows us how humans may someday achieve a form of immortality and be able to leave our bodies entirely, laser porting to new havens in space.

TECHNOLOGY IS EVOLVING AT THE FASTEST RATE WE'VE EVER SEEN, BUT IT MAY BE THE SLOWEST RATE WE'LL EVER SEE AGAIN! What does this mean for the future of the human race? Do we resist these changes or embrace them? Australian biomedical engineer, inventor and visionary Dr Jordan Nguyen has lived a life of curiosity and wonder - exploring positive opportunities in science and technology, including robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics, extended reality and avatars. He believes that technology is a powerful tool that we as humans can choose to harness to create a better tomorrow. In A Human's Guide to the Future, Dr Jordan takes us on a journey through the exciting innovations being developed around the world, along the fun and imaginative rollercoaster of his own adventures, and to envisage where our collective future is headed. So get your undies on the outside of your pants and slap on your best cape, because we're hurtling towards a new era. A Superhuman Era!

Why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down? A provocative look at what happens next at the frontiers of human knowledge. The history of humanity is the history of big ideas that expand our frontiers—from the wheel to space flight, cave painting to the massively multiplayer game, monotheistic religion to quantum theory. And yet for the past few decades, apart from a rush of new gadgets and the explosion of digital technology, world-changing ideas have been harder to come by. Since the 1970s, big ideas have happened incrementally—recycled, focused in narrow bands of innovation. In this provocative book, Michael Bhaskar looks at why the flow of big, world-changing ideas has slowed, and what this means for the future. Bhaskar argues that the challenge at the frontiers of knowledge has arisen not because we are unimaginative and bad at realizing big ideas but because we have already pushed so far. If we compare the world of our great-great-great-grandparents to ours today, we can see how a series of transformative ideas revolutionized almost everything in just a century and a half. But recently, because of short-termism, risk aversion, and fractious decision making, we have built a cautious, unimaginative world. Bhaskar shows how we can start to expand the frontier again by thinking big—embarking on the next Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Apollo mission—and embracing change.

An evolutionary biologist provides surprising insights into the changing nature of Homo sapiens in this “important and an entertaining read" (Choice). In Future Humans, evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon draws on recent discoveries to examine the future evolution of our species. Combining knowledge of our past with current trends, Solomon offers convincing evidence that evolutionary forces are still affecting us today. But how will modernization—including longer lifespans, changing diets, global travel, and widespread use of medicine and contraceptives—affect our evolutionary future? Solomon presents an entertaining and accessible review of the latest research on human evolution in modern times, drawing on fields from genomics to medicine and the study of our microbiome. Drawing together topics ranging from the rise of online dating and Cesarean sections to the spread of diseases such as HIV and Ebola, Solomon suggests that we are entering a new phase in human evolutionary history—one that makes the future less predictable and more interesting than ever before.

Technology advances are making tech more . . . human. This changes everything you thought you knew about innovation and strategy. In their groundbreaking book, Human + Machine, Accenture technology leaders Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson showed how leading organizations use the power of human-machine collaboration to transform their processes and their bottom lines. Now, as new AI powered technologies like the metaverse, natural language processing, and digital twins begin to rapidly impact both life and work, those companies and other pioneers across industries are tipping the balance even more strikingly toward the human side with technology-led strategy that is reshaping the very nature of innovation. In Radically Human, Daugherty and Wilson show this profound shift, fast-forwarded by the pandemic, toward more human—and more humane—technology. Artificial intelligence is becoming less artificial and more intelligent. Instead of data-hungry approaches to AI, innovators are pursuing data-efficient approaches that enable machines to learn as humans do. Instead of replacing workers with machines, they're unleashing human expertise to create human-centered AI. In place of lumbering legacy IT systems, they're building cloud-first IT architectures able to continuously adapt to a world of billions of connected devices. And they're pursuing strategies that will take their place alongside classic, winning business formulas like disruptive innovation. These against-the-grain approaches to the basic building blocks of business—Intelligence, Data, Expertise, Architecture, and Strategy (IDEAS)—are transforming competition. Industrial giants and startups alike are drawing on this radically human IDEAS framework to create new business models, optimize post-pandemic approaches to work and talent, rebuild trust with their stakeholders, and show the way toward a sustainable future. With compelling insights and fresh examples from a variety of industries, Radically Human will forever change the way you think about, practice, and win with innovation.

This book will appeal to everyone who reads science fiction or thinks about science and its impact on our lives. It raises profound economic, ethical, political, sociological, and psychological questions. It explores our fears and fantasies as it examines a range of fictions, films, and TV programs that speculate about the possibilities of humans in the future. The contributions here ask central questions that have provoked the creators and readers of science fiction since Mary Shelley inaugurated the genre with her novel Frankenstein. What are the aims and limits of science and technology? What are our responsibilities toward the products of our advancing science and technology? What kinds of creatures will we produce or encounter in the future? What rights will we grant to these creatures or – more worryingly – will they grant to us? Do science and technology make us more civilized or more barbaric? How should we treat each other? Ultimately, what does it mean to be human?