Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence

"There's joy in self-described "satellite nerd" James Bridle's British-accented voice as he narrates this audiobook about consciousness and the search for planetary intelligence." - AudioFile Magazine This audiobook is read by the author. Artist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence—plant, animal, human, artificial—and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos. What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared with other beings—beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in “artificial” intelligence. But as it approaches, it also gets weirder: rather than a friend or helpmate, AI increasingly appears as something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us.