Reading is one of the best ways to keep yourself engaged and busy. Though traditional, it is a significant way to get your brain working. Nonetheless, whether you’re a fan of fiction or non-fiction, selecting the best book of a specific genre is crucial.
With artificial intelligence (AI) taking the world by storm, there’s a growing interest in learning how AI functions. Whether you’re a techie, an AI expert, or a beginner with limited knowledge of AI, this list’s got you covered.
Best Recommended Artificial Intelligence Books To Read
No matter how much you already know about AI, there’s always more to the technology. Here are some of the top AI books you can add to your reading list.
1. AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own
- Author: Verity Harding
- Where To Buy/Order: Press Princeton
Overview: Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI’s power grows, so does the need to figure out what—and who—this technology is really for. AI Needs You argues that society must take the lead in answering this urgent question and ensuring that AI fulfills its promise.
Verity Harding draws inspiring lessons from the histories of three twentieth-century tech revolutions—the space race, in vitro fertilization, and the internet—to empower each of us to join the conversation about AI and its possible futures.
Sharing her perspective as a leading insider in technology and politics, she rejects the dominant narrative, which often likens AI’s advent to that of the atomic bomb. History points the way to an achievable future in which democratically determined values guide AI to be peaceful in its intent; to embrace limitations; to serve purpose, not profit; and to be firmly rooted in societal trust.
2. The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
- Author: Ray Kurzweil
- Where To Buy/Order: Penguin Random House
Overview: Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near and its vision of an exponential future have spawned a worldwide movement. Kurzweil’s predictions about technological advancements have largely come true, with concepts like AI, intelligent machines, and biotechnology now widely familiar to the public.
In this entirely new book, Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances toward the Singularity—assessing his 1999 prediction that AI will reach human-level intelligence by 2029 and examining the exponential growth of technology—that, shortly, will expand human intelligence a millionfold and change human life forever.
Among the topics he discusses are rebuilding the world, atom by atom with devices like nanobots; radical life extension beyond the current age limit of 120; reinventing intelligence by connecting our brains to the cloud; how exponential technologies are propelling innovation forward in all industries and improving all aspects of our well-being such as declining poverty and violence; and the growth of renewable energy and 3-D printing.
He also considers the potential perils of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, including such topics of current controversy as how AI will impact employment and the safety of autonomous cars, and “After Life” technology, which aims to virtually revive deceased individuals through a combination of their data and DNA.
The culmination of six decades of research on artificial intelligence, The Singularity Is Nearer is Ray Kurzweil’s crowning contribution to the story of this science and the revolution that is to come.
3. Co-intelligence: Living and Working with AI
- Author: Ethan Mollick
- Where To Buy/Order: Penguin Random House
Overview: Something new entered our world in November 2022 — the first general-purpose AI that could pass for a human and do the kinds of creative, innovative work that only humans could do previously. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick immediately understood what ChatGPT meant: after millions of years on our own, humans had developed a kind of co-intelligence that could augment, or even replace, human thinking. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world.
In Co-Intelligence, Mollick urges us to engage with AI as co-workers, co-teachers, and coaches. He assesses its profound impact on business and education, using dozens of real-time examples of AI in action. Co-intelligence shows what it means to think and work together with smart machines, and why it’s imperative that we master that skill.
Mollick challenges us to utilize AI’s enormous power without losing our identity, to learn from it without being misled, and to harness its gifts to create a better human future. Wide-ranging, hugely thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.
4. God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
- Author: Meghan O’Gieblyn
- Where To Buy/Order: Penguin Random House
Overview: For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes’s division of the mind from the world made materialism our ruling paradigm, asking whether our consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions.
Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life—urgently require rethinking.
Meghan O’Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
5. Artificial Intelligence For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)
- Authors: John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron
- Where To Buy/Order: Amazon
Overview: Every time you use a smart device or some sort of slick technology―be it a smartwatch, smart speaker, security alarm, or even customer service chat box―you’re engaging with artificial intelligence (AI).
If you’re curious about how AI is developed or whether AI is real, Artificial Intelligence For Dummies holds the answers you’re looking for. Starting with a basic definition of AI and explanations of data use, algorithms, special hardware, and more, this reference simplifies this complex topic for anyone who wants to understand what operates the devices we can’t live without.
This book will help:
- Separate the reality of artificial intelligence from the hype
- Know what artificial intelligence can accomplish and what its limits are
- Understand how AI speeds up data gathering and analysis to help you make informed decisions more quickly
- See how AI is being used in hardware applications like drones, robots, and vehicles
- Know where AI could be used in space, medicine, and communication fields sooner than you think
Almost 80% of the devices you interact with every day depend on some sort of AI. And although you don’t need to understand AI to operate your smart speaker or interact with a bot, you’ll feel a little smarter―dare we say more intelligent―when you know what’s going on behind the scenes. So don’t wait. Pick up this popular guide to unlock the secrets of AI today!
6. Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction
- Author: Tom Taulli
- Where To Buy/Order: Amazon
Overview: Artificial Intelligence Basics has arrived to equip you with a fundamental, timely grasp of AI and its impact. Author Tom Taulli provides an engaging, non-technical introduction to important concepts such as machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP), robotics, and more.
In addition to guiding you through real-world case studies and practical implementation steps, Taulli uses his expertise to expand on the bigger questions that surround AI. These include societal trends, ethics, and the future impact AI will have on world governments, company structures, and daily life.
Google, Amazon, Facebook, and similar tech giants are far from the only organizations on which artificial intelligence has had―and will continue to have―an incredibly significant result. AI is the present and the future of your business as well as your home life. Strengthening your prowess on the subject will prove invaluable to your preparation for the future of tech, and Artificial Intelligence Basics is the indispensable guide that you’ve been seeking.
This book is ideal for beginners without technical background or knowledge.
7. Life 3.0 Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- Author: Max Tegmark
- Where To Buy/Order: Amazon
Overview: How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology – and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning, or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?
What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues – from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness, and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.
8. The Alignment Problem: How Can Machines Learn Human Values?
- Author: Brian Christian
- Where To Buy/Order: Amazon
Overview: Artificial intelligence is rapidly dominating every aspect of our modern lives influencing the news we consume, whether we get a mortgage, and even which friends wish us happy birthday. But as algorithms make ever more decisions on our behalf, how do we ensure they do what we want? And fairly?
This conundrum – dubbed ‘The Alignment Problem’ by experts – is the subject of this timely and important book. From the AI program that cheats at computer games to the sexist algorithm behind Google Translate, bestselling author Brian Christian explains how, as AI develops, we rapidly approach a collision between artificial intelligence and ethics.
If we stand by, we face a future with unregulated algorithms that propagate our biases – and worse – violate our most sacred values. Urgent and fascinating, this is an accessible primer to the most important issue facing AI researchers today.
9. Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans
- Author: Melanie Mitchell
- Where To Buy/Order: Amazon
Overview: A leading computer scientist brings human sense to the AI bubble
No recent scientific enterprise has been so alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promises and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. Writing with clarity and passion, leading AI researcher Melanie Mitchell offers a captivating account of modern-day artificial intelligence.
Flavored with personal stories and a twist of humor, Artificial Intelligence illuminates the workings of machines that mimic human learning, perception, language, creativity, and common sense. Weaving together advances in AI with cognitive science and philosophy, Mitchell probes the extent to which today’s ‘smart’ machines can think or understand, and whether AI even requires such elusive human qualities at all.
Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans provides readers with an accessible and clear-eyed view of the AI landscape, what the field has accomplished, how much further it has to go, and what it means for all of our futures.
10. The Algorithm: How AI Can Hijack Your Career and Steal Your Future
- Author: Hilke Schellmann
- Where To Buy/Order: Amazon
Overview: Artificial intelligence is being used, on a massive scale, to decide who gets hired, fired, and promoted. Through whistleblower exclusives, leaked internal documents, and astonishing real-world practices, journalist Hilke Schellmann reveals the secret rise of AI in the world of work. Testing them herself, she discovers that many algorithms making these high-stakes calculations do more harm than good, and traces their origins to troubling pseudoscientific ideas about people’s ‘true’ essence.
Interviewing experts, developers, and ordinary workers, The Algorithm offers fascinating and alarming truths. From software analyzing interviewees’ facial expressions and tone of voice to video games assessing their performance, to ‘personality profiles’ built from candidates’ social media, almost all major employers use AI in recruitment. Programs track their staff’s activity, group dynamics, and physical health, identifying who is productive, a bully, worth long-term investment, or likely to quit. But can we trust them?
In a world of severe job insecurity, workplace algorithms are on the brink of dominating or even threatening us—if we don’t fight back.
Conclusion
The above-curated list of best AI books to read provides insightful information both for beginners as well as experts in the field. Each book’s overview presented above highlights the detailed summary directly from the book’s own preview page, saving readers the need to go to the book’s link.
From offering a basic introduction to AI and exploring ethical topics, these books provide insightful knowledge for readers at all levels.
Which one of these books have you read? Comment on the box below!
