AI Book Club
I read some books about AI so you don’t have to.
Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick
I devoured this book. It’s a perfect overarching overview into the ethical and practical implications of AI, with a myriad of mental models on how to integrate it into your life.
I think this book will hold up; it discusses approaches to AI in a more timeless manner that will likely mostly still make sense as AI gets more advanced.
Find it here if any of the below sounds interesting to you:
Deciding which tasks are for you and which are for AI,
His four guiding principles on approaching AI in general (more on that to come),
Three potential outcomes of AI, ranging from terrible (see: Terminator) to pretty okay,
The ethics of using AI, but in a digestible and non-scary way because somethings ethics talk gets a bit too high brow.
The ChatGPT Revolution by Donna McGeorge
This is an easy read, and my top recommendation for anyone who is worried they are being left behind in the race to become AI-competent. It absolutely does not really cover off the history, the ethics or the more esoteric discussion areas of AI, but it’s useful as hell.
Unlike some others listed here, this one will absolutely date out pretty quickly but it’s a very accessible guide to go from zero to one hundred with large language models (LLMs).
Find it here if any of the below sounds interesting to you:
The three Ps of crafting the perfect prompt (this one will be irrelevant soon as AI gets better at deciphering our terrible asks),
How to get started as someone completely terrified,
Practical examples on how to use it for work or life.
The Economy of Algorithms by Marek Kowalkiewicz
This one does exactly what it says on the tin.
It’s a great book about AI in relation to the economy and business, and a brief history of algorithms more broadly with a lot of Australian references.
I’d recommend this to senior decision makers in business who would likely sign off on AI use but might not use it heavily in their day-to-day. Great for anyone who is also a bit wary of AI and how it actually works for commercial activities, but written in a very non-judgemental way.
Things that stuck with me from this book…
Some examples of algorithms going wild (especially AI to AI with little human oversight)
Marek’s nine rules for the age of algorithms
How to think about automation and algorithms as digital minions to do your bidding for you.
P.S. Was blessed to watch Marek speak on the most fascinating panel at Melbourne Writers Festival 2024 that very much changed my knee jerk reaction to AI.
Moral AI And How We Get There by Jana Schaich Borg, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Vincent Conitzer
This one is a pretty hefty read, but one of the most thought provoking books on AI that I’ve read so far. But also one that’s left me with way more questions than answers.
Recommend for anyone still unpacking the ethics behind AI use in the modern world, especially from the perspectives of ethics, the law, business and philosophy.
Dig in here if any of the below resonates:
What is AI? (Surprisingly, there are so many different ideas and thoughts here.)
How does AI interact with the basic moral values of safety (e.g. self driving cars, medical diagnoses), equality (e.g. not adopting gender or race bias that’s present in training data), privacy (e.g. can sensitive training data accidentally get leaked), freedom (e.g. can a government track and stop people from moving around, but also AI to help the blind navigate the world freely), transparency (e.g. does the AI have to explain how it came up with something), and deception (e.g. deepfakes or AI hallucinations).
Can AI respect privacy? (I learnt some very surprising and scary hacks around reverse engineering private information from data.)
Who is responsible when things go wrong, such as a self-driving car running someone over? What are the differences between moral obligations, legal responsibilities
How do we impart human morality onto AI?
You’ll notice that these are all questions, because frankly this book just raised more questions than answers in my head.
