Steve Grand is a self-taught scientist who has deliberately eschewed large public grants and laboratory affiliation so as to give himself the freedom required to put his revolutionary theories on artificial intelligence to the test. The result is Lucy, one of the most advanced research robots in existence, and it is Lucy's successes and failures which stand as indicators of the present state of robotics. The compelling story of Lucy's creation, all done in Steve's own home, is a fascinating mixture of human perseverance and cutting edge scientific endeavour.

Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps

Computers & Technology

Grand, Steve

Computer Science

Orion Publishing

Working mostly alone, almost single-handedly writing 250,000 lines of computer code, Steve Grand produced Creatures®, a revolutionary computer game that allowed players to create living beings complete with brains, genes, and hormonal systems--creatures that would live and breathe and breed in real time on an ordinary desktop computer. Enormously successful, the game inevitably raises the question: What is artificial life? And in this book--a chance for the devoted fan and the simply curious onlooker to see the world from the perspective of an original philosopher-engineer and intellectual maverick--Steve Grand proposes an answer. 
 From the composition of the brains and bodies of artificial life forms to the philosophical guidelines and computational frameworks that define them, Creation plumbs the practical, social, and ethical aspects and implications of the state of the art. But more than that, the book gives readers access to the insights Grand acquired in writing Creatures--insights that yield a view of the world that is surprisingly antireductionist, antimaterialist, and (to a degree) antimechanistic, a view that sees matter, life, mind, and society as simply different levels of the same thing. Such a hierarchy, Grand suggests, can be mirrored by an equivalent one that exists inside a parallel universe called cyberspace.

Creation: Life and How to Make It

Games & Strategy Guides

Harvard University Press

Working mostly alone, almost single-handedly writing 250,000 lines of computer code, Steve Grand produced Creatures®, a revolutionary computer game that allowed players to create living beings complete with brains, genes, and hormonal systems―creatures that would live and breathe and breed in real time on an ordinary desktop computer. Enormously successful, the game inevitably raises the question: What is artificial life? And in this book―a chance for the devoted fan and the simply curious onlooker to see the world from the perspective of an original philosopher-engineer and intellectual maverick―Steve Grand proposes an answer.
From the composition of the brains and bodies of artificial life forms to the philosophical guidelines and computational frameworks that define them, Creation plumbs the practical, social, and ethical aspects and implications of the state of the art. But more than that, the book gives readers access to the insights Grand acquired in writing Creatures―insights that yield a view of the world that is surprisingly antireductionist, antimaterialist, and (to a degree) antimechanistic, a view that sees matter, life, mind, and society as simply different levels of the same thing. Such a hierarchy, Grand suggests, can be mirrored by an equivalent one that exists inside a parallel universe called cyberspace.

Steve Grand is a self-taught scientist who has deliberately eschewed large public grants and laboratory affiliation so as to give himself the freedom required to put his revolutionary theories on artificial intelligence to the test. The result is Lucy, one of the most advanced research robots in existence, and it is Lucy's successes and failures which stand as indicators of the present state of robotics. The compelling story of Lucy's creation, all done in Steve's own home, is a fascinating mixture of human perseverance and cutting edge scientific endeavour.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Grand, Steve. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Grand, Steve

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Grand, Steve. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps

Creation: Life and How to Make It

Creation: Life and How to Make It

Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps