From Oxford's leading AI researcher comes a fun and accessible tour through the history and future of one of the most cutting edge and misunderstood field in science: Artificial Intelligence The somewhat ill-defined long-term aim of AI is to build machines that are conscious, self-aware, and sentient; machines capable of the kind of intelligent autonomous action that currently only people are capable of. As an AI researcher with 25 years of experience, professor Mike Wooldridge has learned to be obsessively cautious about such claims, while still promoting an intense optimism about the future of the field. There have been genuine scientific breakthroughs that have made AI systems possible in the past decade that the founders of the field would have hailed as miraculous. Driverless cars and automated translation tools are just two examples of AI technologies that have become a practical, everyday reality in the past few years, and which will have a huge impact on our world. While the dream of conscious machines remains, Professor Wooldridge believes, a distant prospect, the floodgates for AI have opened. Wooldridge's A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence is an exciting romp through the history of this groundbreaking field--a one-stop-shop for AI's past, present, and world-changing future.

A fascinating portrait of the people, programs, and ideas that have driven the search to create thinking machines. Rich with anecdotes about the founders and leaders and their celebrated feuds and intellectual gamesmanship, AI chronicles their dramatic successes and failures and discusses the next nece ssary breakthrough: teaching computers "common sense".

“Artificial intelligence has always inspired outlandish visions—that AI is going to destroy us, save us, or at the very least radically transform us. Erik Larson exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it. This is a timely, important, and even essential book.” —John Horgan, author of The End of Science Many futurists insist that AI will soon achieve human levels of intelligence. From there, it will quickly eclipse the most gifted human mind. The Myth of Artificial Intelligence argues that such claims are just that: myths. We are not on the path to developing truly intelligent machines. We don’t even know where that path might be. Erik Larson charts a journey through the landscape of AI, from Alan Turing’s early work to today’s dominant models of machine learning. Since the beginning, AI researchers and enthusiasts have equated the reasoning approaches of AI with those of human intelligence. But this is a profound mistake. Even cutting-edge AI looks nothing like human intelligence. Modern AI is based on inductive reasoning: computers make statistical correlations to determine which answer is likely to be right, allowing software to, say, detect a particular face in an image. But human reasoning is entirely different. Humans do not correlate data sets; we make conjectures sensitive to context—the best guess, given our observations and what we already know about the world. We haven’t a clue how to program this kind of reasoning, known as abduction. Yet it is the heart of common sense. Larson argues that all this AI hype is bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we are to make real progress, we must abandon futuristic talk and learn to better appreciate the only true intelligence we know—our own.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field within computer science that is attempting to build enhanced intelligence into computer systems. This book traces the history of the subject, from the early dreams of eighteenth-century (and earlier) pioneers to the more successful work of today's AI engineers. AI is becoming more and more a part of everyone's life. The technology is already embedded in face-recognizing cameras, speech-recognition software, Internet search engines, and health-care robots, among other applications. The book's many diagrams and easy-to-understand descriptions of AI programs will help the casual reader gain an understanding of how these and other AI systems actually work. Its thorough (but unobtrusive) end-of-chapter notes containing citations to important source materials will be of great use to AI scholars and researchers. This book promises to be the definitive history of a field that has captivated the imaginations of scientists, philosophers, and writers for centuries.

This book is a history of artificial intelligence, that audacious effort to duplicate in an artifact what we consider to be our most important property—our intelligence. It is an invitation for anybody with an interest in the future of the human race to participate in the inquiry.

Intelligent agents are employed as the central characters in this introductory text. Beginning with elementary reactive agents, Nilsson gradually increases their cognitive horsepower to illustrate the most important and lasting ideas in AI. Neural networks, genetic programming, computer vision, heuristic search, knowledge representation and reasoning, Bayes networks, planning, and language understanding are each revealed through the growing capabilities of these agents. A distinguishing feature of this text is in its evolutionary approach to the study of AI. This book provides a refreshing and motivating synthesis of the field by one of AI's master expositors and leading researches. - An evolutionary approach provides a unifying theme - Thorough coverage of important AI ideas, old and new - Frequent use of examples and illustrative diagrams - Extensive coverage of machine learning methods throughout the text - Citations to over 500 references - Comprehensive index

An argument that—despite dramatic advances in the field—artificial intelligence is nowhere near developing systems that are genuinely intelligent. In this provocative book, Brian Cantwell Smith argues that artificial intelligence is nowhere near developing systems that are genuinely intelligent. Second wave AI, machine learning, even visions of third-wave AI: none will lead to human-level intelligence and judgment, which have been honed over millennia. Recent advances in AI may be of epochal significance, but human intelligence is of a different order than even the most powerful calculative ability enabled by new computational capacities. Smith calls this AI ability “reckoning,” and argues that it does not lead to full human judgment—dispassionate, deliberative thought grounded in ethical commitment and responsible action. Taking judgment as the ultimate goal of intelligence, Smith examines the history of AI from its first-wave origins (“good old-fashioned AI,” or GOFAI) to such celebrated second-wave approaches as machine learning, paying particular attention to recent advances that have led to excitement, anxiety, and debate. He considers each AI technology's underlying assumptions, the conceptions of intelligence targeted at each stage, and the successes achieved so far. Smith unpacks the notion of intelligence itself—what sort humans have, and what sort AI aims at. Smith worries that, impressed by AI's reckoning prowess, we will shift our expectations of human intelligence. What we should do, he argues, is learn to use AI for the reckoning tasks at which it excels while we strengthen our commitment to judgment, ethics, and the world.

Over the coming decades, Artificial Intelligence will profoundly impact the way we live, work, wage war, play, seek a mate, educate our young, and care for our elderly. It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previously believed to be the sole dominion of humans. Whether we regard them as conscious or unwitting, revere them as a new form of life or dismiss them as mere clever appliances, is beside the point. They are likely to play an increasingly critical and intimate role in many aspects of our lives. The emergence of systems capable of independent reasoning and action raises serious questions about just whose interests they are permitted to serve, and what limits our society should place on their creation and use. Deep ethical questions that have bedeviled philosophers for ages will suddenly arrive on the steps of our courthouses. Can a machine be held accountable for its actions? Should intelligent systems enjoy independent rights and responsibilities, or are they simple property? Who should be held responsible when a self-driving car kills a pedestrian? Can your personal robot hold your place in line, or be compelled to testify against you? If it turns out to be possible to upload your mind into a machine, is that still you? The answers may surprise you.

"In a world where where online and offline overlap and coincide, this book presents how digital intelligence is a key competence for the future of education and looks at how AI and other digital tools are improving the world of education"--

'An excellent starter for those who want to gain an insight into how AI works and why it's likely to shape our lives.' – The Daily Telegraph Artificial intelligence will shake up our lives as thoroughly as the arrival of the internet. This popular, up-to-date book charts AI’s rise from its Cold War origins to its explosive growth in the 2020s. Tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker (TikTok Boom and YouTubers) goes into the laboratories of the Silicon Valley innovators making rapid advances in ‘large language models’ of machine learning. He meets the insiders at Google and OpenAI who built Gemini and ChatGPT and reveals the extraordinary plans they have for them. Along the way, he explores AI’s dark side by talking to workers who have lost their jobs to bots and engages with futurologists worried that a man-made super-intelligence could threaten humankind. He answers critical questions about the AI revolution, such as what humanity might be jeopardising and the professions that will win and lose – and whether the existential threat technologists Elon Musk and Sam Altman are warning about is realistic – or a smokescreen to divert attention away from their growing power. How AI Ate the World is a ‘start here’ guide for anyone who wants to know more about the world we have just entered. Reviews 'An excellent starter for those who want to gain an insight into how AI works and why it's likely to shape our lives.' The Daily Telegraph 'How AI Ate the World prodigiously captures the key issues and concerns around artificial intelligence.' Azeem Azhar, Exponential View 'From ancient China to Victorian England, How AI Ate The World is the story of the characters, moments, technologies, and relationships that populate the rich history of artificial intelligence... How AI Ate The World grapples with what the age of automation means for the people living through it.' Harry Law, University of Cambridge 'A witty, engaging book that takes us through AI's bumpy past to help us understand its present, and future, impacts. I highly recommend it to anyone who is impacted by AI tech – which is to say, everyone on the planet.' Sasha Luccioni, Hugging Face 'Easily the most comprehensive book on AI I have read so far, covering all the key issues' Peter Hunt, Business & Tech Correspondent, Evening Standard 'A comprehensive and compelling look at the technology that's transforming our world. It's an essential guide, full of surprises, to the technology you need to know.' Matt Navarra, social media expert 'Whether you are new to AI or have been following the AI hype for years, Chris Stokel-Walker offers an entertaining balance of history, context and insight that has something for everyone. The story of AI’s evolution is a complex one, but Stokel-Walker tackles it in a clear, direct way that will bring you up to speed while helping you grapple with what it all means — for individuals, the workplace, society and the planet.' Sharon Goldman, VentureBeat 'This book is a wild, brilliant ride through centuries of thinking about and decades of developing machines that can learn. As a crash course in how we got to this current point of thrilling chaos, it will take some beating. Whether or not you agree with Stokel-Walker’s solutions or not, How AI Ate The World is essential reading to understand where we are and how we got here' Ciaran Martin, former CEO, UK National Cyber Security Centre Buy the book to discover your future