James Barrat

For two decades, award-winning filmmaker James Barrat has written and produced documentary films for National Geographic, Discovery, PBS and many other broadcasters in the U.S. and Europe. Barrat’s films cut across cultures and epochs to tell deeply human narratives of archeology, science and adventure.

His most recent book is Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era.

Barrat’s long 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 pessimistic. “Intelligence will win out,” he said, “in whatever form. It won’t have to be human.”