Fact: The Machine Is Not Alive

The marketing copy for How To Speak Machine comes with a bit of overzealousness when it reads:

the machine… It’s (NOT) alive like a human, but it is not like us.

—(corrected) copy from inner jacket flap of HTSM

That’s not true. It can present itself as if it were living, but it’s not really alive. We’re alive. It’s not.

Computation is NOT alive. We are. It ain’t.

Thanks to MIT Professor Rosalind Picard for pointing out how this correction needs to be made clear! —JM