A compelling story to expand the human’s perspective on the new, unprecedented world of AI
In Robot-Proof: When Machines Have All the Answers, Build Better People, Dr. Vivienne Ming, a "force of nature in the AI world", helps readers grasp the ugly and the amazing of how individuals, companies, and societies will respond to the changes that are already taking hold due to the advent of AI. Rather than a wonky textbook on machine learning or a utopian/dystopian (take your pick) screed, Robot-Proof is a book about people, exploring what it means to be human in an increasingly automated world.
Let’s answer the question, “How do we robot-proof our kids, ourselves, and our society?
What predicts long-term life outcomes across millions of little kids?
What drives career success in both hyper-networked salespeople and hyper-nerdy programmers?
Why is the Informational-Exploration Paradox the most terrifying phenomenon you’ve never heard of?
Why are ill-posed problems the future work, education, and a robot-proof humanity?
What predicts the smartest team, and how will AI change it?
Dr. Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author. She is the Founder and Executive Chair of The Human Trust, a philanthropic "mad science" incubator, and the Chief Scientist at Possibility Sciences, where she is pioneering systems for hybrid human-machine collective intelligence. She earned her PhD from Carnegie Mellon, then held joint appointments at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Vivienne was an early pioneer in using AI for human potential. As Chief Scientist of Gild, she built machine learning models trained on 122 million professionals to predict human capability. Today, through The Human Trust, she has developed AI to treat diabetes and bipolar disorder, reunite orphan refugees, and help autistic children learn facial expressions.
Dr. Keith Holyoak, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at UCLA, is a leading researcher in the field of human thinking, as well as a poet. His scientific work combines behavioral investigations with both cognitive neuroscience and computational modeling of cognition. A recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, which awarded him the Warren Medal in 2022. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of several books in cognitive science, including Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning and Discovery (1986), Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought (1995), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (2001), The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning (2012), The Spider’s Thread: Metaphor in Mind, Brain, and Poetry (2019), and The Human Edge: Analogy and the Roots of Creative Intelligence (2025). He has also published a volume of his translations of classical Chinese poetry, as well as four volumes of his own poetry. Keith’s fascination with analogy and symbolism carried him over to a parallel career as a poet.