Bookshelf
Information in the AI era arrives fast and in fragments, which is exactly why I make room for long-form input. Since moving from interaction design into applied AI and joining DLG, I have kept feeding myself systematic knowledge outside work, the way I learned before AI. This is my reading list.
Where AI came from Mind & judgment Products & people Science & philosophy
Where AI came from The Computer and the Brain John von Neumann Lectures prepared for 1956 and left unfinished, comparing the digital computer with the nervous system. A Brief History of AI Nick An academic history of AI from Dartmouth onwards: people, schools and arguments. Genius Makers Cade Metz How deep learning went from the fringe to the mainstream, and the people and companies behind it. The Worlds I See Fei-Fei Li reading From young immigrant to ImageNet: how data changed computer vision. Quand la machine apprend Yann LeCun LeCun on the road to convolutional nets and deep learning, and his view of machine intelligence. Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans Melanie Mitchell reading Where AI stands, for general readers: what it can do and why it still lacks common sense and analogy. Nexus Yuval Noah Harari Human history told as a history of information networks, up to AI. Mind & judgment Surfaces and Essences Douglas Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander Analogy as the core of thought. The Emperor's New Mind Roger Penrose The case that consciousness can't be fully captured by algorithms. Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman reading System 1 and System 2: how people judge, and where they go wrong. The Undoing Project Michael Lewis The story of Kahneman and Tversky's partnership. Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned Kenneth Stanley, Joel Lehman reading From novelty-search research: chasing objectives directly often gets you less far. Products & people Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey Moore The gap a new technology has to cross between early adopters and the mainstream. Influence Robert Cialdini reading The psychological principles behind persuasion. Story Robert McKee reading The structure and principles of screenwriting. AIO & GEO in Practice Zou Yang finished How content becomes the answer an AI recommends. Science & philosophy Worldviews Richard DeWitt reading An introduction to the history and philosophy of science, from Aristotle to quantum mechanics. What Is Life? Erwin Schrödinger A physicist on life: order, negative entropy and heredity. Out of Control Kevin Kelly Distributed systems, swarms and the evolution of machines.