interesting look at the AI future ahead

great narration of an interesting book. Challenging us to compare the future with the past.

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A voice of compassion

John Lennox is a voice for our times, to remind all humans that mystery is part of being human. A must read

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A timely, fascinating little book.

This book is concise and well written and as with his other works demonstrates the extraordinarily wide and deep knowledge of Science, Philosophy and Biblical Christianity. The conclusions it draws seem to be philosophically strong and logically sound. There really are very few authors who can draw from such a breadth of knowledge and comment authoritatively on such topics and in such a refreshing way. Along with fellow intellectual titans: Dr William Lane Craig and Professor Anthony Flew: Lennox is one of my favourite authors. In my opinion this book is well worth reading.

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3 people found this helpful

Bizarre, tedious, churlish, and very disappointing

Quite a tedious experience in such a fascinating topic.

There were sections of this book I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. Using passages of the Bible to desperately argue with AI seemed forced, strained, and just downright strange.

The author is clearly an intellectual heavyweight, you just need to look at his education and achievements to see that. And so I was especially surprised at the quite churlish tone of this book. It felt more like an infantile hatched job book report on other books.

I did love his explanation of the differences between the worlds of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. Perfectly, succinctly explained and I'll certainly be citing that in future.

Once he got into the meat of the discussion and it all became Bible references and desperately tedious links to magic talking snakes and the like I just couldn't take this seriously. It was a real struggle to try and focus on his reasoning and try to set aside the mysticism. The problem is his entire argument hinges on you believing in the bible being real, if you don't it's a farce. So unfortunately I felt alienated as a reader doing my best to inform myself of a facet of this topic I do not usually consider. But maybe it was unfair of me to expect anything other than just that.

I was expecting a considered, reasoned moral debate on the value of AI and an effective, thought-provoking view of the moral and existential crisis that AI introduces to humanity. But it doesn't really do that. It just tries desperately to apply bible verses to AI. "We aren't God so we shouldn't" was more or less what he says. "We shouldn't augment ourselves with technology because God would be cross" was another point. "Jesus is the OG Homo Deus and we best not be stepping on his toes" was another. It all felt infantile, reductive, and narrow in scale.

I think he really missed the opportunity to have a grown-up discussion on morality in AI and how it could potential cheapen or damage our humanity. That was clearly his aim but it just felt like political point-scoring for his religion. "My Holy book says this so we are right" rather than actually discussing it logically. But maybe that is what this was, an unapologetic Sunday school analysis on AI. But did anyone really need that?

The churlish adversarial tone he takes towards Harari and his books was utterly ridiculous. Constantly sniping and snarking. Very poor show, I expected more. I must confess I haven't read Harari's novels myself, but this book has certainly inspired me to do so. Which seems to be the opposite to what it was trying to achieve.

The chap actually doing the reading for the audiobook did a good job at keeping such dry material engaging. No problems in that department.

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Religious marketing

Performance was good however the contents was pure religious marketing. Catchy title and all and complete and utter misunderstoanding of the history of Christianity. Reading the gospels as if they predicted the futue even if we know the whole thing was compiled centuries after the events it prophesizes. I can't believe I spent a credit on this. Looks like homo deus has really offended the author. More reason to re-read that instead.

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Cheated want my credit back

From the title and its description I thought that I was buying a book about AI instead I got a diatribe on religion. I am well aware of religions and the harm they do.

I am amazed that Oxford University allow their name to be associated with such an author who, in my opinion, appears to need to mislead the public by using erroneous titles in order to sell his audio books.

I am requesting a refund for the credit I used to purchase this title; if I don't receive one sadly I will be forced to stop using audio books as I will no longer trust them to supply me with honest books.

Dr Mike Scott retired SL

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Too religious

Started well with interesting developments but got increasingly biblical which was not interesting, I want to know more about future ai tech not Jesus

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1 person found this helpful