"After reading Mitchell's guide, you'll know what you don't know and what other people don't know, even though they claim to know it. And that's invaluable." --The New York Times
Now more relevant than ever, and updated with a new preface, comes this sweeping examination of artificial intelligence, cited as one of the five best books on AI by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. With a new preface situating Artificial Intelligence within the mercurial developments of the past few years, the award-winning author and leading computer scientist Melanie Mitchell reveals AI's turbulent history and the recent spate of apparent successes, grand hopes, and emerging fears surrounding it.
In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today. Along the way, she introduces the dominant models of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought underpinning recent achievements. She meets with fellow experts such as Douglas Hofstadter, a cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who explains why he is "terrified" about the future of AI. She explores the profound disconnect between the hype and the actual achievements in AI, providing a clear sense of what the field has accomplished and how much further it has to go.
Interweaving stories about the science of AI and the people behind it, Artificial Intelligence brims with clear-sighted, captivating, and accessible accounts of the most interesting and provocative modern work in the field, flavored with Mitchell's humor and personal observations. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today's AI, its quest for "human-level" intelligence, and its impact on the future for us all.
