Bøger udgivet af MONASH UNIV PUB

1939: Paul Kurz - engineer, refugee from Vienna and Dunera Boy - is separated from his wife, Paula, and his mother at the outbreak of World War II and interned in Australia. Late 1960s: an Australian student from an Irish Catholic family railing against his alcoholic father, struggling with his religious upbringing and coming to terms with his sexuality strikes up a profound friendship with Paul, two generations older. Decades after Paul's death, he pieces together Paul's incredible story from surviving family letters, and travels to Vienna to discover Paul's history and that of the city - its beauty, its violence, its cruelty, what Paul loved and how he suffered there. The letters reveal Paul's heartbreaking separation from Paula, his life in exile in England and Australia, his desperate attempts to reconnect with his wife and the eventual fateful outcome. This lyrical, poignant account combines memoir, biography and history to explore the enduring influence of one elderly Holocaust survivor and the intergenerational impact of the famed Dunera.

Technology is developing fast - so fast that it threatens to overwhelm the very species whose genius lies in its technological cunning: us. From the metaverse to genetic engineering and mood-altering pharmaceuticals, to cybersex and cyberwar and the widespread automation of work, new technologies are rewriting the terms of our existence, not in a neutral spirit of 'progress' but in line with the priorities of power and profit, and in ways that often work against the grain of our fundamental being.In this timely, provocative book, Richard King argues that we need to evolve a more critical attitude to new technologies if we are to avoid a world in which humans are no different in kind from algorithmic machines. The stakes could not be higher. As science, technology and capitalism fuse into a single system, and activists and entrepreneurs talk of a 'post-human' future in which individuals will transform themselves using powerful computers and biotechnologies, we are entering unchartered territory - a territory marked with the mapmaker's warning, Here Be Dragons ... Here Be Monsters.

Technology described as artificial intelligence is becoming more pervasive, with AI algorithms transforming science and industry, along with our everyday lives. They can rapidly analyse and classify all manner of data. They can generate passages of text and produce realistic images. They are used to design medicines, to autonomously drive cars. They are our tour guides through the vast collection of information on the web. They observe us to suggest products to purchase, movies to watch and music to hear. They keep a watchful eye on us through cameras at supermarket self-checkouts. And their scope of application is only widening-- increasingly, we are interacting with AI without knowing it. But what is AI really? Is it truly intelligent? Is it always a benignly useful modern-world companion? Not if we consider the increasing volume of AI-enabled criminal activity, or the ethical dilemmas posed by the use of AI-powered weaponry. Further, examples already exist showing that the careless use of AI can lead to the exacerbation of social inequalities. AI systems, no matter how complex their workings or impressive their abilities, are the product of deliberate human design-- not just the design of algorithms, but also strategies for sourcing and managing the massive quantities of data on which they operate. But it's not just the creators of AI who need to think about the impact of the technology. Given its ramifications, all of us need to start thinking about how we want to live with AI.