James Barrat

Award-winning documentary filmmaker James Barrat is the author of the groundbreaking nonfiction book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (Thomas Dunne, 2013). Named a Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013, Our Final Invention explores the daunting risks of developing advanced Artificial Intelligence. 

These risks include the weaponization of AI in an international ‘intelligence arms race’ and the annihilation of mankind at the hands (or bytes) of superintelligent machines. Barrat’s lifelong fascination with artificial intelligence came to a head when he interviewed inventor Ray Kurzweil, roboticist Rodney Brooks, and sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke. 

Kurzweil and Brooks were casually optimistic about a future they considered inevitable — a time when we will share the planet with intelligent machines. Clarke, on the other hand, was gloomy. “Intelligence will win out,” Clarke told him. “We’ll lose the race with intelligent machines.” Clarke’s pessimism planted a seed in Barrat’s mind that gave rise to Our Final Invention.

Reviewers rave that Our Final Invention is “hard-hitting,” “important and disturbing,” “excellently written and deeply researched,” and “The compelling story of humanity’s most critical challenge. A Silent Spring for the twenty-first century.” For two decades, James Barrat’s documentary films have set viewer rating records for National Geographic, Discovery, PBS, and other broadcasters in the U.S. and Europe. 

Barrat’s films cut across cultures and eras to tell thrilling, deeply human narratives of archeology, science, and expedition adventure. Some of his best-known titles include The Gospel of Judas, Herod’s Lost Tomb, and The Rise of the Black Pharaohs. He currently resides in Annapolis, Maryland.