These Strange New Minds

How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

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Stunning advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems. The march of this new technology is set to upturn our economies, challenge our democracies, and refashion society in unpredictable ways. We can expect these AI systems to soon be making autonomous decisions on the user’s behalf, with transformative impact on everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work.

Can AI systems ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘understand’? Could they manipulate or deceive you, and if so, what might they make you do? Whose interests do they ultimately represent? And when will they be able to move beyond words and take actions for themselves in the real world? Ultimately, can we look forward to a technological utopia, or are we in the process of writing ourselves out of history?

A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind

With clarity, insight and wit, Summerfield dives beneath the ever-breaking wave of large language models to reveal the deeper principles at play, and the challenges and opportunities that these powerful new technologies present. An essential and highly readable guide to thinking abut how, and weather, computers can think, what's coming next and what we should do about it
Anil Seth, author of Being You

About Christopher Summerfield

Christopher Summerfield has one foot in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience – studying the brains of humans as Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford – and the other in AI research, helping build intelligent systems as a Staff Research Scientist at the pioneering Google DeepMind. He has won several awards, including the prestigious Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award in 2015, and is regularly invited to give keynote talks across the world. Christopher has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and book chapters and his academic book, Natural General Intelligence: How understanding the brain can help us build AI, was widely acclaimed. This is his first book for a general readership.

Details

Imprint: Penguin
Published: 06/03/2025
ISBN: 9781405966177
Length: 384 pages
Price: £11.99

All editions

These Strange New Minds

How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

Format:

Buy the book from:

A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times

By far the best guide to a newly emerging species with which we will share the planet for the foreseeable future

As a leading authority in both computational neuroscience and the social impacts of AI, Christopher Summerfield is perfectly situated to explore the meaning and implications of these machines that are so uncannily like – and unlike – ourselves

Summerfield takes us on a tour of this astonishing new technolog - general purpose AI - and helps us to understand the issues it raises. You might choose to be alarmed, excited, or indifferent to large language models but you should read Chris’s book before you decide

'A closeup look at the large language models that have radically changed computer technology...a clear-minded, accessible examination of how AI systems work'

For readers fascinated by the future of AI, this book is an eye-opening exploration of a revolution unfolding before our eyes

Summerfield, a neuroscientist at Oxford, charts the evolution of artificial intelligence, from early large language models to today’s ChatGPT, and reflects on the larger questions of learning and
consciousness

About Christopher Summerfield

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