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informative
relaxing
medium-paced
So fun, with the same irreverent tone as her blog, but while also covering an insane amount of information about AI and its capabilities (and failures). I listened to the audiobook, which was really nicely narrated. Hearing the AI-generated knock-knock jokes read aloud was a huge highlight.
it is what it says on the tin, and a great starting place for people who want to understand, but don't want to get too deep into the guts of the programming
You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is to deep learning what Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is for predictive modeling: a must read for everybody with even a passing interest in the topic. I run a data science department and spend much of my time in the weeds of building models, cleaning data, and attending meetings. It's easy to lose the big picture. This book offers an urgently needed high level view of the field of AI. Beginners and experts alike can benefit from Shane's insight and humor.
Tired: AI is unbelievably smart and it's going to kill us all.
Wired: AI is dumb as hell and that is the danger.
Janelle Shane is one of the world's more well-known AI experts, who has run the blog AI Weirdness for several years. I haven't read that much of her blog, but in this book form I found Shane's writing to be both clear and pedagogical. She leads the reader through both the basics and the weird crinkles of how Artificial Intelligence works, with examples, footnotes, and highly charming drawings.
I really appreciated the emphasis on the social angle, i.e. how human biases can easily be duplicated or even intensified by AI despite the intent of the human creators. For example, a system for automatically choosing job candidates based on resumes showed a clear bias against women and people of color. Neither gender nor race were included in the training data, but the AI had inferred these based on names and home addresses.
This is a fantastic primer on how AI actually works (and doesn't work), and while I did have some foreknowledge going in, I still feel like this would be a great resource for anyone interested in AI even if you don't have much in the way of technical background. My one wish would actually be for there to be more technical detail, but I can totally see how that would have exploded the scope and aim of the book.
Wired: AI is dumb as hell and that is the danger.
Janelle Shane is one of the world's more well-known AI experts, who has run the blog AI Weirdness for several years. I haven't read that much of her blog, but in this book form I found Shane's writing to be both clear and pedagogical. She leads the reader through both the basics and the weird crinkles of how Artificial Intelligence works, with examples, footnotes, and highly charming drawings.
I really appreciated the emphasis on the social angle, i.e. how human biases can easily be duplicated or even intensified by AI despite the intent of the human creators. For example, a system for automatically choosing job candidates based on resumes showed a clear bias against women and people of color. Neither gender nor race were included in the training data, but the AI had inferred these based on names and home addresses.
This is a fantastic primer on how AI actually works (and doesn't work), and while I did have some foreknowledge going in, I still feel like this would be a great resource for anyone interested in AI even if you don't have much in the way of technical background. My one wish would actually be for there to be more technical detail, but I can totally see how that would have exploded the scope and aim of the book.
This is one the best book I've ever read about AI. it's well researched and humorous at the same time.
I loved the humour, the style of writing and the clarity of the explanations.
I will surely visit the author's blog and look forward to reading her further books.
Highly recommended
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
I loved the humour, the style of writing and the clarity of the explanations.
I will surely visit the author's blog and look forward to reading her further books.
Highly recommended
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
Do not read this book while rocking a sleeping child. You will laugh. The child will wake up and gaze balefully at you because the child does not understand why the death metal recipes or the horrifyingly wonderful Halloween costumes are hilarious.
In all other circumstances, however, do please enjoy this book. It was definitely written by a human.
In all other circumstances, however, do please enjoy this book. It was definitely written by a human.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in return for my unbiased review!
This book provides an excellent summary of AI and how it works. It's written in a funny and easy going style, with absolutely adorable sketches. Seriously, it's worth reading this for the AI doodles. They made me burst out laughing a few times.
Moreover, as someone with almost no knowledge about AI, I can say confidently that this book manages to be clear and understandable, even if you don't know anything. It gets ideas across without being too technical or using too much professional jargon. The author uses hilarious metaphors and real life examples to highlight important points and it definitely makes it all clear and interesting!
AI is such a buzzword nowadays so I enjoyed receiving more facts on the abilities of AI. Realizing that AI is best when solving narrow problems, that AI develops through mistakes, that AI struggles when seeing the unknown and also doesn't have a long term memory was all new to me.
I found the parts that talked about creativity and AI absolutely fascinating. It's very cool to think about how AI isn't bound by our human thoughts and therefore can go to places and connections we usually don't. Like I'd struggle to think about original cat names but an AI with enough input can just list thousands (and yeah, most won't be relevant but still).
I loved reading about AI shortcuts ("how do I gamble the best? Simply don't gamble"). Of course, it's concerning (like AI assuming there are no diseases because they are rare) but it's neat to think of how far this can go and how AI sees our world differently.
All in all, if you're up for a short, funny and informative book about AI, this is a good read for you.
What I'm taking With Me
• The knowledge of AI very much depends on its data bank. Which makes me feel like we need philosophers and other humanists involved when creating AI for real life applications, you've got to have someone that's thinking about social repercussions, about the ethical implications of representation.
• Companies often claim to use AI but in fact use people because it's cheaper. Combining AI with human help works well, such as advertising bots that redirect complicated questions to human workers.
• Man, I'm just here waiting for AI to come up in a conversation so I can talk about this book.
First Week Uni Adventures
• My Peruvian roommate said that I'm so dramatic, I could be from Latin America. To be fair, she said this after she walked into the room and found me lying on my bed and saying, "math will be the death of me, I'm doomed". But really, math is freaking hard and I am scared.
• People from my degree are so smart and so serious and all of them have so many life goals and I'm just here like, "idk man, I'll probably go back to being a graphic designer after this".
• Econ is so confusing, what the heck
• If one more person tells me I seem like I'm from Tel Aviv, I'm going to cry.
• I need to stop signing up for things and I feel physically unable to because everything is so cool and interesting and I want to do it all.
• Comparative Politics is the best thing ever and I am in love with our professor and really, it's just a wild class.
• A guy in my PPE classes is convinced he saw me in a left wing propaganda video and like, I'd like to be confident enough to say that couldn't be me but I am scared it might be and that I don't know of it.
• My dorm floor is about 50% international students. It's fun because I was considering studying abroad and well, I feel like I'm getting the dorm room experience of studying abroad.
This book provides an excellent summary of AI and how it works. It's written in a funny and easy going style, with absolutely adorable sketches. Seriously, it's worth reading this for the AI doodles. They made me burst out laughing a few times.
Moreover, as someone with almost no knowledge about AI, I can say confidently that this book manages to be clear and understandable, even if you don't know anything. It gets ideas across without being too technical or using too much professional jargon. The author uses hilarious metaphors and real life examples to highlight important points and it definitely makes it all clear and interesting!
AI is such a buzzword nowadays so I enjoyed receiving more facts on the abilities of AI. Realizing that AI is best when solving narrow problems, that AI develops through mistakes, that AI struggles when seeing the unknown and also doesn't have a long term memory was all new to me.
I found the parts that talked about creativity and AI absolutely fascinating. It's very cool to think about how AI isn't bound by our human thoughts and therefore can go to places and connections we usually don't. Like I'd struggle to think about original cat names but an AI with enough input can just list thousands (and yeah, most won't be relevant but still).
I loved reading about AI shortcuts ("how do I gamble the best? Simply don't gamble"). Of course, it's concerning (like AI assuming there are no diseases because they are rare) but it's neat to think of how far this can go and how AI sees our world differently.
All in all, if you're up for a short, funny and informative book about AI, this is a good read for you.
What I'm taking With Me
• The knowledge of AI very much depends on its data bank. Which makes me feel like we need philosophers and other humanists involved when creating AI for real life applications, you've got to have someone that's thinking about social repercussions, about the ethical implications of representation.
• Companies often claim to use AI but in fact use people because it's cheaper. Combining AI with human help works well, such as advertising bots that redirect complicated questions to human workers.
• Man, I'm just here waiting for AI to come up in a conversation so I can talk about this book.
First Week Uni Adventures
• My Peruvian roommate said that I'm so dramatic, I could be from Latin America. To be fair, she said this after she walked into the room and found me lying on my bed and saying, "math will be the death of me, I'm doomed". But really, math is freaking hard and I am scared.
• People from my degree are so smart and so serious and all of them have so many life goals and I'm just here like, "idk man, I'll probably go back to being a graphic designer after this".
• Econ is so confusing, what the heck
• If one more person tells me I seem like I'm from Tel Aviv, I'm going to cry.
• I need to stop signing up for things and I feel physically unable to because everything is so cool and interesting and I want to do it all.
• Comparative Politics is the best thing ever and I am in love with our professor and really, it's just a wild class.
• A guy in my PPE classes is convinced he saw me in a left wing propaganda video and like, I'd like to be confident enough to say that couldn't be me but I am scared it might be and that I don't know of it.
• My dorm floor is about 50% international students. It's fun because I was considering studying abroad and well, I feel like I'm getting the dorm room experience of studying abroad.
The target audience for this book seems to be people who know nothing about AI and/or are fans of Shane's blog, AI Weirdness. I now fit solidly in both of those categories. I had never heard of the blog before spotting this book in the library, but now I just can't get enough of those wacky AI recipes.
Shane gives as comprehensive an overview as you probably can at this level of how AI works, the different types of AI, and the things it does well (and poorly). It is a bit repetitive and leans heavily on the zany food/band/cat names her programs produce, but they do serve a valuable purpose in demonstrating how AIs learn and make mistakes. I found the examples of AIs taking shortcuts or cheating the system the most fascinating, and it was definitely a sobering look at the limits of current technology.
Overall a hilarious, informative, and quick read for people who don't know much about AI. I was laughing out loud at some of Shane's creations. There is a lot of cringey circa 2006 internet humor in there (magic sandwiches! murderbots!), but honestly I was digging it.
Shane gives as comprehensive an overview as you probably can at this level of how AI works, the different types of AI, and the things it does well (and poorly). It is a bit repetitive and leans heavily on the zany food/band/cat names her programs produce, but they do serve a valuable purpose in demonstrating how AIs learn and make mistakes. I found the examples of AIs taking shortcuts or cheating the system the most fascinating, and it was definitely a sobering look at the limits of current technology.
Overall a hilarious, informative, and quick read for people who don't know much about AI. I was laughing out loud at some of Shane's creations. There is a lot of cringey circa 2006 internet humor in there (magic sandwiches! murderbots!), but honestly I was digging it.
funny
informative
medium-paced