The Feature Book Picks 2024
Photo credit: The Feature Staff (book covers courtesy of their publishers)
As 2024 marks another year in the AI hype cycle, with AI continuing to be a key macro trend shaping industries and society, The Feature’s 2024 Book Picks is a curated selection of books on Artificial Intelligence that have helped shape our understanding of the technology. These works offer valuable insights into the theoretical, practical, and social dimensions of AI as we navigate an AI-driven future.
- Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI By Ethan Mollick
Ethan Mollick’s book vividly details how we can work, learn, and live with AI. The Wharton Professor of Management, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation, focuses on generative AI and its practical implications on education and business. Beyond future predictions, the book serves as a useful guide for readers to understand and navigate the AI era.
“As artificial intelligence proliferates, users who intimately understand the nuances, limitations, and abilities of AI tools are uniquely positioned to unlock AI’s full innovative potential. These user innovators are often the source of breakthrough ideas for new products and services.” ―Ethan Mollick
- Why Machines Learn By Anil Ananthaswamy
Why Machines Learn offers a comprehensive overview of how machine learning works, the evolution of neural networks, and the elegant mathematics behind modern AI from both historical and scientific perspectives. A highly technical, yet accessible read, detailing key developments in AI.
“It is only when we understand the inevitability of learning machines that we will be prepared to tackle a future in which AI is ubiquitous, for good and for bad.” ―Anil Ananthaswamy
- Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI By Madhumita Murgia
Madhumita Murgia, AI editor at the Financial Times, examines the role of AI and automated decision-making through narrative-driven research. Her insights are grounded on a collection of case studies and global reporting about people from diverse backgrounds and various experiences with the technology.
“Philosophers believe that ultimately a person’s freedom is threaded inextricably with the quality of their agency – their ability to perceive their actions and desires as their own, and to feel able to create change. In small and large ways, AI systems are impinging on this, creating a feeling of individual disempowerment – even a sense of loss of our free will.” ―Madhumita Murgia
