Humans v. AI. Just in case.

“Motion is more important than facial features alone when it comes to detecting a faux human. Ask an innocuous question, and during the reply, observe the subject’s skin, lips, and teeth. Even if the robot is almost perfectly human-like you will get a creepy feeling. Your gut reaction is a human survival trait and a well-known phenomenon that Japanese researchers call 'the uncanny valley'.”

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All the stuff about robots in this book is based on existing or near-future robotics. Hilarious yet slightly unsettling at the same time. Written by a guy who's earned his Ph.D. in robotics, even! An excellent read for anyone who's looking for a fun book that has a little more substance to it. Highly recommended. ( )

The Zombie Survival Manual taught us how to survive if the undead started coming after us, trying to eat our brains and force us to join their ranks. But zombies do not exist, nor could they. They are pretend. Robots are not. Wilson looks at the research currently being conducted on robotics and extrapolates the future of robotics from this. He examines each kind of robot, their strengths and weaknesses, and lets us know how best to defeat the robots when (or if) they go bonkers. This book is funny and riveting at the same time. While the concepts are a bit out there still, they aren't all THAT crazy. I am not much of a sci-fi buff. I still sometimes say Star Trek when I mean Star Wars, but I also know what an ansible is. This book managed to pull enough actual science into the fiction to make the book interesting, plausible, and a little frightening.
My favorite addition to the book was the very end, when he examines different movie versions of the robots going crazy. The Matrix, Star Wars, and I, Robot were all parsed for their ways of defeating the robots (I, Robot won for best method). ( )

This book is full of useful information on how to defeat the coming robot rebellion. Not only does it provide suggestions on how to hide, it also provides real-life explanations of how robots of today and tomorrow will implement sensors and navigate their environment. Interesting, informative, and humorous, overall a good read. ( )

I don’t know about uncomfortably humorous…but I did laugh my fanny off in a couple of places (always fun in public) and now I’m presumably prepared for the immanent robot uprising…heh…now if my library only carried the Zombie Survival Guide, I’d be set. Alas, it does not, looks like I’ll have to shell out some money for that one. This is quick, light (and funny) lunchtime reading!