Professors Masud Husain and Frances Ashcroft discuss These strange new minds: how AI learned to talk and what it means by Chris Summerfield.
The book considers how advances in artificial intelligence have led to large language models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini that are transforming everything we do. It discusses how they work, how similar or not they are to our own minds and brains and what the future holds for society. Is AI going to be of immense value to us or is it going to write us out of history? The book helps us to understand not merely where AI is headed, but what it shows us about ourselves.
Masud Husain is Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He studies memory, motivation and apathy in healthy individuals and in patients. He is also the author of Our brains Our Selves a book that featured previously on this podcast series. It won the Royal Society Trivedu=I Science book prize in 2025 and was also listed as a best science book of the year in the Financial Times, the Times and Guardian.
