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Reading lists

The best books about AI

Melanie Mitchell

If you think you understand AI and all of the related issues, you don't. By the time you finish this exceptionally lucid and riveting book you will breathe more easily and wisely

Michael Gazzaniga, author of The Consciousness Instinct

Melanie Mitchell writes about AI with a warm, friendly voice and an unpretentious brilliance that no machine could hope to match... for now

Computers are capable of feats of astonishing intelligence, while at the same time lacking any semblance of common sense. Melanie Mitchell takes us through an enlightening tour of how artificial intelligence currently works, and how it falls short of true human understanding

A must read for anyone interested in the emerging revolution of AI, machine learning and big data. Mitchell lays bare the hyperbole and misconceptions that are being propagated in the media. This book can be, and should be, read by the proverbial man or woman-on-the-street, the Silicon Valley guru, members of Congress, or a student of the humanities, as well as by professional scientists and engineers. They will all profit enormously from it

Mitchell cuts through the hype that the field of A.I. is often prone to and lays out what it does well, where it fails, and how it might do better

George Musser, author of Spooky Action at a Distance

Melanie Mitchell deftly provides the reader with a keen, clear-sighted account of the history of AI and neural networks. A wonderfully informative book

Mitchell is one of the finest minds in computation today, and one of the clearest-spoken. She understands the power of a metaphor &mdash; and why nearly all of the ones we have for AI are either simply poor, in the best of cases, or dangerously misleading. If you want to know where our current mayhem came from, read this account of the field

The recent resurgence of AI has led to predictions of everything from the end of the world to immortality. Melanie Mitchell’s very intelligent, clear and sensible book is a welcome corrective to the exaggerated fears and hopes for AI, and the prefect primer to start understanding how the systems actually work

Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby

Mitchell knows what she’s talking about. Even better, she’s a clear, cogent and interesting writer . . . It has significantly improved my knowledge when it comes to automation technology, but the greater benefit is that it has also enhanced my appreciation for the complexity and ineffability of human cognition

Without shying away from technical details, this survey provides an accessible course in neural networks, computer vision, and natural-language processing, and asks whether the quest to produce an abstracted, general intelligence is worrisome . . . Mitchell’s view is a reassuring one

A Guide for Thinking Humans

No recent scientific enterprise has been so alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. How intelligent are the best of today's AI programs? To what extent can we entrust them with decisions that affect our lives? How human-like do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us in most, if not all, human endeavours? 
 
From leading AI researcher and award-winning author Melanie Mitchell comes a knowledgeable and captivating account of modern-day artificial intelligence. Flavoured with personal stories and a twist of humour, Artificial Intelligence illuminates the workings of machines that mimic human learning, perception, language, creativity and common sense. Weaving together advances in AI with cognitive science and philosophy, Mitchell probes the extent to which today's 'smart' machines can actually think or understand, and whether AI requires such elusive human qualities in order to be reliable, trustworthy and beneficial. 
 
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans provides readers with an accessible, entertaining and clear-eyed view of the AI landscape, what the field has actually accomplished, how much further it has to go and what it means for all of our futures.

Melanie Mitchell

Praise for Artificial Intelligence

If you think you understand AI and all of the related issues, you don't. By the time you finish this exceptionally lucid and riveting book you will breathe more easily and wisely