Artificial intelligence is the new buzzword of digital capitalism. Intelligent computer systems make medical diagnoses and provide legal advice. They manage stock trading and will soon control our cars. They paint, write, interpret and compose. More and more intelligent robots are standing on assembly lines, greeting us at the hotel, leading us through the museum or frying burgers and shredding the lettuce that goes on top. However, alongside the utopian vision of a beautiful, new, intelligent world of technology, there always have been images of artificial intelligence gone terribly wrong, where machines monitor us at every step, take over our jobs and defy our control.

Manuela Lenzen shows which hopes and fears are realistic and which belong to science fiction. She describes what a good life with artificial intelligence could look like and explains how we can learn a lot about ourselves from these clever machines.