The Handover Audiobook By David Runciman cover art

The Handover

How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs

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The Handover

By: David Runciman
Narrated by: David Runciman
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'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before.

A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die.

They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago - and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 David Runciman (P)2023 Profile Books Ltd History & Theory Modern Political Science Politics & Government Technology Socialism Robotics Capitalism
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Where is AI going beyond ChatGPT? How will it affect how we are governed and will it ever need to be governed as if it is alive? Runciman explores a vision off-the-peg near future by calling on Hobbes and others from our past - fantastic insight

The 2020s insight we all need

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Do not except any deep analysis or original thoughts. But points to the ultimate existential question of modernity: how to tame the potential doomsday machines we are creating.

A very long essay

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