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The best books about AI

The Story of AI

The Road to Conscious Machines

'A terrific book - essential reading for everyone seeking to make sense of Artificial Intelligence' Professor Sir Adrian Smith, Director and Chief Executive of the Alan Turing Institute 
 
In this myth-busting guide to AI past and present, one of the world's leading researchers shows why our fears for the future are misplaced. 
 
The ultimate dream of AI is to build machines that are like us: conscious and self-aware. While this remains a remote possibility, rapid progress in AI is already transforming our world. Yet the public debate is still largely centred on unlikely prospects, from sentient machines to dystopian robot takeovers. 
 
In this lively and clear-headed guide, Michael Wooldridge challenges the prevailing narrative, revealing how the hype distracts us from both the more immediate risks that this technology poses - from algorithmic bias to fake news - and the true life-changing potential of the field. The Road to Conscious Machines elucidates the discoveries of AI's greatest pioneers from Alan Turing to Demis Hassabis, and what today's researchers actually think and do. 
 
'Nobody understands the past, the present, the promise and the peril of this new technology better than Michael Wooldridge. The definitive account' Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist 
 
'Effortlessly readable. The perfect guide to the history and future of AI' Tom Chivers, author of The AI Does Not Hate You

A terrific book - essential reading for everyone seeking to make sense of Artificial Intelligence. Wooldridge provides a clear-sighted and entertaining account of both the technical development of AI and the social and ethical issues arising from its increasing deployment.

Professor Sir Adrian Smith, Director and Chief Executive of The Alan Turing Institute

Takes us expertly by the hand through the labyrinth of Artificial Intelligence. A penetrating and lucid contribution to our digital understanding, which dispels many of the myths surrounding AI. Authoritative but accessible and highly readable.

Lord Clement-Jones CBE, Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence 2017–2018

Calm, informative and refreshingly free of hype, Wooldridge's effortlessly readable book is the perfect guide to the history and future of AI.

Tom Chivers, science writer and author of 'The AI Does Not Hate You'

In the long and often frustrating quest for artificial intelligence, something spectacular has happened in the past decade. Nobody understands the past, the present, the promise and the peril of this new technology better than Michael Wooldridge. He has written the definitive account of the new AI.

Lord Matt Ridley, author of 'The Rational Optimist' and 'The Evolution of Everything'

The buzz around AI has unearthed many questions and in The Road to Conscious Machines you get answers.

Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of CognitionX and Chair of the UK Government's AI Council

In an age when AI is promoted as either the greatest threat or best hope for humanity, Wooldridge gives us a text that is accessible and authoritative. A balanced and informed view of the decades-long history of AI, its methods and techniques, achievements and shortfalls.

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Professorial Research Fellow in Computer Science and Principal of Jesus College, Oxford

In this diligent and reassuring explanation of the immense difficulty of recreating intelligence in a machine, Michael Wooldridge succeeds not only in writing an engaging history of AI, but in telling us about the fabulously complicated structures on which our own consciousness rests

Michael Wooldridge is a professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of Hertford College. He has been an AI researcher since 1989, and has published more than 400 scientific articles on the subject. From 2014 to 2016, he was President of the European Association for AI, and from 2015 to 2017 he was President of the International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI). He lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.

Everything you need to know about the coming AI. A Ladybird Expert Book

Artificial Intelligence

THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – FROM ALAN TURING TO THE AGE OF ALEXA 
By Michael Wooldridge – Presenter of the 2023 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture 
'I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' Alan Turing (1950) 
 
Part of the ALL-NEW Ladybird Expert series. 
 
This book is for everyone living in the age of Artificial Intelligence. And this is an accessible and authoritative introduction to one of the most important conversations of our time . . . 
 
 Written by computer scientist Michael Wooldridge, Artificial Intelligence chronicles the development of intelligent machines, from Turing's dream of machines that think, to today's digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. 
 
 AI is not something that awaits us in the future. Inside you'll learn how we have come to rely on embedded AI software and what a world of ubiquitous AI might look like. 
 
What's inside? 
 
- The British mathematician Alan Turing 
- Can machines 'understand'? 
- Logical and Behavioural AI 
- The reality of AI today 
- AI tomorrow 
- And much more . . . 
 
For an adult readership, the Ladybird Expert series is produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. Each beautifully illustrated book features the first new illustrations produced in the original Ladybird style for nearly forty years.

The artwork is gloriously retro, echoing the original Ladybird house style but containing completely up to date information.

Michael Wooldridge is a professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of Hertford College. He has been an AI researcher since 1989, and has published more than 350 scientific articles on the subject. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI) and the European Association for AI (EurAI). From 2014 to 2016, he was President of the European Association for AI, and from 2015 to 2017 he was President of the International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI). He lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Artificial Intelligence is an accessible and authoritative introduction to intelligent machines and the humans that program them. 
 
Written by computer scientist Michael Wooldridge, Artificial Intelligence chronicles the development of intelligent machines, from Turing's dream of machines that think, to today's digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. 
 
 AI is not something that awaits us in the future. Inside you'll learn how we have come to rely on embedded AI software and what a world of ubiquitous AI might look like.

Michael Wooldridge

Abridged Edition

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. 
 
Artificial Intelligence, a Level 7 Reader, is B2 in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future perfect simple, mixed conditionals, past perfect continuous, mixed conditionals, more complex passive forms and modals for deduction in the past. 
 
This book aims to explain what AI is and what it is not. It turns to different subjects to understand AI, and what it means for the world. It also examines important AI developments in the past, present and future.

Michael Wooldridge

Books by Michael Wooldridge

Articles featuring Michael Wooldridge

The best books about AI

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