The Most Human Human

Title: The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive
Author: Brian Christian
Genre: Non-fiction (Popular science/philosophy)
Pages: 320
Rating (out of 5 stars): *****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: In 2009, Brian Christian participated in the "Turing Test," the annual competition in which computers and real people engage in 5-minute instant message sessions with a panel of judges.  The twist is that the judges don't know if they are speaking with a computer or a human, and at the end of the conversation they must vote on whether they think they were talking to a real person or not.  The computer that receives the most votes wins the "most human computer" award at the end of the competition, while the person that gets the most votes receives the "most human human" award.  Christian decides that he's going to go all-out to be the "most human human" in the competition, and prepares for several months beforehand to figure out what really makes him (and us) human.  Holding degrees in philosophy, computer science, and poetry, Christian is ideally suited to tackle the surprisingly beguiling question of how to be human.
Thoughts: I loved this book.  I found it surprisingly profound, and I'm still thinking about some of the ideas in the book a month after finishing it.  I expected it to be a kind of Malcolm Gladwell-esque book that was interesting and well-written.  It wasn't actually all that well-written, but it more than made up for it in super interesting material.  What really surprised me was how much it made me really re-think how I can make myself more human.  By looking at what things computers can easily copy when they are imitating us, we can easily see things we do that are quite pre-programmed, mundane, and robotic.  But there are some things that computers simply cannot (yet) copy, and that's where true human interaction really takes place.  That's where I want my relationships to go, and reading this book helped me understand better how to get there.  Highly recommended.
Disclaimer: None.

Saturday

Title: Saturday
Author: Ian McEwan
Genre: Modern Fiction
Pages: 304
Rating (out of 5 stars): ****
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: Saturday tells the story of a single day in the life of Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon who lives in London.  It is a Saturday in February of 2003, and Henry wakes up to see a place with its wing on fire streaking towards Heathrow.  Henry's first thought is terrorism, and although it turns out he was mistaken (it was just an accident), terrorism and threats from unknown persons continue to haunt him throughout his day.
Thoughts: First off, you have to admire McEwan's prose.  Aside from any messages or deep thoughts that one might get from Saturday, I thoroughly enjoyed the great descriptions of everyday events, of situations I find myself in all the time.  And, to be sure, Saturday is filled with a lot of description and detail.  The plot doesn't unfold very quickly at all, so you've got to enjoy the prose if you're going to enjoy the book.  As for the plot itself, it was fine but nothing spectacular.  I felt like things got tied up a bit too neatly in the end (don't want to give any spoilers) for my taste.  However, the book did an excellent job of being a vehicle for thinking about terrorism, clashes of cultures, and more generally, how we handle situations and people that we are unfamiliar (and probably uncomfortable) with.  The book allows you to think about this on many different scales: terrorists (macro), muggers (mezzo), and within your own family (micro).  That is what made the book worth reading for me.
Disclaimer: There is plenty of swearing in the book, and some love-making between the main character and his wife.