The Driver in the Driverless Car, Vivek Wadhwa
The Driver in the Driverless Car, Vivek Wadhwa
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The Driver in the Driverless Car
How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future

Author: Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever

Narrator: Julie Eickhoff

Unabridged: 4 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/03/2017


Synopsis

A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go, a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea, uses a 3D printer to produce it, and implants it and saves a child's life.Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us.Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, self-driving vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening, alienating future: eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it, our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light, he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create—that even if our hands are not on the wheel, we will decide the driverless car's destination.

About Vivek Wadhwa

VIVEK WADHWA is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School and Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering at Silicon Valley. He is the co-author of Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain - and How to Fight Back; The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent; and Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology. He has held appointments at Duke University, Stanford Law School, Emory University, and Singularity University. ALEX SALKEVER is a writer, futurist, and technology leader. He has served as a senior executive at a number of Silicon Valley startups and as a senior leader at respected brands in technology, most recently at Mozilla, where he served as a vice president.


Reviews

In his satirical novel Candide, Voltaire pokes endless fun at Dr. Pangloss’ (in real life Leibniz) statement to the effect that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Vivek Wadhwa writes about a gee whiz techno-optimist future using Dr. Pangloss’ impossibly rosy tinted spectacles. Every key tec......more

Goodreads review by Mal

“Not long ago, I was very pessimistic about the future. . . Today, I talk about this being the greatest period in history, when we will solve the grand challenges of humanity and enter an era of enlightenment and exploration such as we saw in my favorite TV series, Star Trek.” Thus begins The Driver......more

Goodreads review by Daniel

Wadhwa’s book is supposed to discuss the ethics and new considerations we need to take with all these new technologies. In the end an overview of all the new technologies were given and the ethics will be up to us to decide. It is not that the book is not well written, it is just that it does not an......more

Goodreads review by Adam

Very informative and entertaining. Recommended. I only contest one point in the book. He makes the point that AI could be good for law because then you wouldn't have to deal with human bias and therefore the legal system would be more fair. Agreed. However, things like racism and sexism would still......more