Kirjahaku

Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last.In this groundbreaking book, Stuart Russell sets out why he has come to consider his own discipline an existential threat to humanity, and how we can change course before it's too late. In brilliant and lucid prose, he explains how AI actually works and its enormous capacity to improve our lives - and why we must never lose control of machines more powerful than we are. Russell contends that we can avert the worst threats by reshaping the foundations of AI to guarantee that machines pursue our objectives, not theirs. Profound, urgent and visionary, Human Compatible is the one book everyone needs to read to understand a future that is coming sooner than we Think.

A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable. In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage. If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves. How can we ensure they never, ever, have power over us? Russell suggests that we can rebuild AI on a new foundation, according to which machines are designed to be inherently uncertain about the human preferences they are required to satisfy. Such machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursue our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.

A punnet of poetry. From childhood nostalgia to innocence lost, Stuart Russell shares memories of summer and details his experience growing up LGBT+ in a small town in Scotland. Illustration by Madison Grimshaw.

The word "Parousia" (par-oo-see-ah) is not a household word, but students of endtime prophecy know it is a reference to the Second Coming of Christ. It comes from two Greek words ("para" beside, and "ousia" state of being) and literally means "to be beside" (present with someone). It came to be a more specific reference to important people coming for an extended (but not long-term) visit to one of their subject territories (a "visitation"). It can refer either to the initial arrival or the afterward presence. It is used in the New Testament almost exclusively of Christ's Second Coming. Russell examines every significant New Testament text about Christ's return, to see when it would occur and what it would be like. Since he believed the Second Coming occurred in the first century at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, his view is labeled "Preterist." The word "Preterist" is another prophetic term with which many are unfamiliar. According to Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, a Preterist is "a theologian who believes the prophecies of the Apocalypse have already been fulfilled." A Preterist is the opposite of a Futurist. Futurists teach that the three major endtime events (parousia, resurrection, judgment) are still future in fulfillment, whereas Preterists teach these events have already been fulfilled. Some may wonder what difference it makes? Everything crucial to Christianity is at risk. The Deity of Christ, the integrity of the apostles and prophets, and the inspiration of the New Testament is at stake. How so? Jesus and the NT writers repeatedly make time-restricted predictions about His return and the other endtime events. They do not merely suggest that Christ's Parousia might occur in their lifetime, they unequivocally affirm it. Liberals, skeptics, and Jewish/Islamic critics use those "time statements" to discredit Jesus and the New Testament. Inspired men cannot make mistakes. Since Jesus and the NT writers predicted Christ's return to occur in their lifetime, and it supposedly didn't happen, they assume Jesus and the NT writers were mistaken. Indeed, if we cannot trust their prophetic utterances, we cannot trust anything else they say. Christianity is totally discredited if those predictions failed to materialize exactly as they prophesied.

Stories from bravery at sea, to the innocent casualties of war, to the repressed victims of their religious beliefs all feature in a book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the area's heritage. "Heroes, Villains, and Victims" is a collection of stories about ordinary people of Hull and the East Riding who found themselves in extraordinary situations. For the most part they are people that history has forgotten, but each, in their own way, contributed to the colourful past of the Humber region. Some were bad, true villains who killed or harmed their fellows and paid the ultimate price, while others were benefactors who left their mark on society, and many were innocent victims who remind us that the 'good old days' were not always so. You can read how a pioneering local plumber successfully opposed three eminent engineers to provide a clean and fresh water supply to Hull, eliminating deadly cholera from the streets. You can find out how a 'cowboy from Yorkshire' helped to change the American Wild West forever, and discover how a farmer's wife's desire to gain a souvenir earned her an MBE and praise from Sir Winston Churchill.The author has trawled newspaper archives and other public documents to uncover the details of the extraordinary lives that are recalled in these pages. The result is a well-researched yet entertaining look at the people of the past.

This is a collection of extraordinary and at times jaw-dropping stories all based either in Hull or on the happenings of Hull's citizens. It includes the full text of the book "Dark Winter", the story of the Hull fishing disasters of 1968. In his second volume looking at the lives of people who became heroes, villains and victims of the times in which they lived, Stuart Russell records stories of people who history, and time, forgot. There are the men who fought the worst that the Arctic weather could throw at them, entombed in their whaling ship for several months, the heroic Hull sailor who lost both feet in a desperate attempt to live when marooned in Newfoundland, the killer who lived quietly in a terrace house in Hull and River Humber's 'pirate island'. Read about the campaigning journalist who exposed Hull's dens of vice, the killer whose lies led another man to the gallows and how a fake gun protected the city of Hull from zeppelin attack.There are stories of the famous, the seamstress who became one of the country's most respected dress designers, the actress who took Hollywood by storm and became its highest paid star, and the people of Hull who faced the might of the Luftwaffe with fortitude and courage. "More Heroes, Villains and Victims of Hull and the East Riding" is an enthralling look into how ordinary people led extraordinary lives. It is a well researched, yet entertaining insight into the area's past.