The Most Individual Human being is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to become human. Its starting place is the annual Turing Check, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computer systems can “think.”

Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Tur­ing Test convenes a -panel of judges who create questions-ranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums-to hidden contestants within an about The Most Human Individual: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to become Alive attempt to discern which is normally human and which really is a pc. The machine that most frequently fools the panel wins probably the most Human Computer Award. But gleam prize, bizarre and interesting, for probably the most Human Human.

In 2008, the top AI program came short of transferring the Turing Check by simply one astonishing vote. In 2009 2009, Brian Christian was selected to participate, and he set out to make sure Homo sapiens would prevail.

The author’s mission to be deemed more human than a com­puter starts a screen onto our very own character. Interweaving contemporary phenomena like customer service “chatbots” and males using programmed dialogue to get women in bars with insights from fields as different as chess, psychiatry, and regulations, Brian Christian examines the philosophical, bio­logical, and moral issues raised by the Turing Test.

One central definition of human continues to be “a being that could cause.” If computer systems can reason, what does which means that for the special place we reserve for humanity?