Keeping up with the Times

Books, books, books! Before I started my journey in machine learning, I stacked up a pile of books on artificial intelligence from my local Waterstones books store. The idea was to gather up as much knowledge as I can about the potential of AI and whether I thought it was something I could do.

Three years down the line, I’ve successfully made the transition from post-man to Machine Learning Engineer, and now I’m circling back on some of the books that inspired me in the early stages of my journey.

Here are some great books you can pick up to learn about Artificial Intelligence.

The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ulitmate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

Author: Pedro Domingos

For those scared of the rise of decision-making machines, Pedro Domingos makes it pretty clear that machines have been deeply involved with our lives for quite some time. In all fairness, there’s some truth to it. Our lives are run by algorithms that are learning more things about us as it consumes the data we put out. Some good examples are YouTube, Netflix, and Google. In totality, the book covers the quest for one master algorithm which would transform machine learning and our lives.

How To Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Author: Ray Kurzweil

Sentiments to whether a computer could ever match human intelligence may slowly be changing. Computers have surpassed humans in a number of tasks — playing Jeopardy and Chess is a good example. Elon Musk’s comments about AI surpassing the human race by 2025 further boost the arguments. Ray Kurzweil was one of the early believers that AI could surpass human intelligence, merely based on the idea that…