The Atomic Human

The Atomic Human is a brilliantly panoramic celebration of the vast expanses of human cognition, as well as the ingenious, flawed, and often bizarre attempts to replicate it artificially. Refusing easy answers, Neil Lawrence cuts a huge swath across the history of computation with passion, erudition, skepticism, and hope. Cognition, he shows us repeatedly, is not an abstract formula, but an impossibly eclectic phenomenon that manifests differently in myriad contexts. From amoebae to the brain to information theory, from Isaac Newton to Alan Turing to ChatGPT, Lawrence shows that our approximations of the mind leave out as much as they leave in. Lawrence reminds us of the plumbed and unplumbed depths of what is really at stake and the unexpected consequences that will accompany the increased integration of society and technology, the uncontrolled behemoth he calls System Zero. What he demonstrates is more relevant and more urgent than most supposed metrics of AI capability today

David Auerbach, author of Meganets

A brilliant technological and philosophical tour de force by one of the world’s foremost authorities on the world of AI and machine learning … at once fascinating, entertaining, and a deeply serious study on one of the most consequential emerging technologies humans have ever developed. Lawrence … argues machines and AI are viewed and used as tools to assist humans and we must never concede control of fundamental decisions of great consequence. A great book by an obviously brilliant author

Mark A. Milley, General, US Army (Ret), 20th Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff

According to Professor Neil Lawrence, all of us suffer from locked-in syndrome … I have been gripped by this insight. Lawrence’s book concludes that whatever AI becomes, and whether or not it ultimately poses a threat to our species, it will never replicate or penetrate the essence of what it means to be human … To be a human is, indeed, to be locked in. But it is in our struggle against inarticulacy that we find our deepest voice and highest meaning

Matthew Syed, The Sunday Times

An enlightening read on AI. Lawrence reminds us that brilliant story telling is the human way to communicate at scale given our otherwise structurally low bandwidth. My main take away is the importance of the difference between intelligence as a property rather than intelligence as an entity

Lord Petitgas, UK Prime Minister’s Special Adviser on Business and Investment

for anyone and everyone who is interested in what makes humans different from machines by one of the world’s experts in AI research. Understanding the differences more may help us live in harmony alongside very intelligent machines so that we can worry less about existential threats and more about how we work with intelligent machines to make the world a better place

Dame Wendy Hall, co-author of Four Internets

It's time we took the implications of AI development seriously ... the machine god would be no friend of ours and it certainly won’t have read or understood this astonishing book. So don’t break things, you might need them later

Bryan Appleyard, Engelsberg Ideas

Lawrence offers novel insight into what intelligence is, how it evolved, and how it is distributed in different living and non-living systems … It has an admirable central humanist message: that we are irreplaceable despite the scary waffle of popular discourse

Adam Rutherford, The Guardian

Neil Lawrence is one of the world’s foremost authorities on AI and one of the few who has deployed AI in large-scale industrial systems. He is also a rare technical leader who understands AI as part of a long evolution of human beings interacting with other intelligences in a cognitive landscape. In this thoughtful and engaging book – ranging from James Watt’s steam engines to World War II gunners and the Apollo lunar landings – Lawrence shows us what’s novel and what’s human about AI. A must read for anyone seeking to understand AI’s place in our world and how to harness it for human flourishing

David A. Mindell, Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT

The clarity, authority, wit and insight Lawrence brings to bear are like torches shining into the turbulent darkness of a subject we all wonder at, but which we mostly feel unable to even to think or talk about with any confidence. Hugely recommended

Stephen Fry

The intellectual sweep of Sapiens focused on understanding and contrasting human and machine intelligence and what this means for society. Professor Lawrence invites the general reader to join him in the debate, effortlessly bridging C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ with lucid accessible explanations of key concepts from mathematics and computer science and resonant human and cultural stories by way of Democritus, Ernest Hemingway and the information contained in our assumptions about what car his mother drives

Dr Jean Innes, CEO The Alan Turing Institute

This is an utterly absorbing account of humans, computers, and how much they differ. It explains why AI cannot substitute for human intelligence even as machine intelligence poses enormous challenges for how information is used and societies are organised

Dame Diane Coyle, author of Cogs and Monsters