The Quest for Artificial Intelligence a history of ideas and achievements

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.

What Hacker News says

davidhunterJan 2023

The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements Nils J. Nilsson

This is a good overview of the history of the field (up to SVMs and before deep NNs). I found this useful for putting all the different approaches into context.

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davidhunterMar 2017

The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements by Nils Nilsson

Gives a great run through of the history of AI research. Understanding the approaches that have been tried before gives you a sense of why the state of the field is what it is today. It is worth bearing in mind that AI research expands far beyond computer science into psychology, philosophy, linguistics etc.

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kavaivaleriDec 2023

Classics

- Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville

- The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie

- Designing Machine Learning Systems by Chip Huyen

- The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingo

Fresh look (books published in 2023)

- The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li

- The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar

- Understanding Deep Learning by Simon J. D. Prince

History of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

- The Turing Guide by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson

- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements by Nils. J Nilsson

- Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence by Pamela McCorduck

AI and Future Studies

- The Year in Tech, 2023: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights Series) by Harvard Business Review, Beena Ammanath, Andrew Ng, Michael Luca, and Bhaskar Ghosh

- AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan

- The Age of AI: And Our Human Future by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher

AI ethics collection

- AI: Its nature and future by Margaret Boden

- AI Ethics by Mark Coeckelbergh

- The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry, Ulises Mejias

- Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford

Lastly, a fire-side list of books written completely using AI

- Aum Golly: Poems on Humanity by an Artificial Intelligence by Jukka Aalho

- Aum Golly 2: Illustrated Poems on Humanity by Artificial Intelligence by Jukka Aalho

- 1 the Road by Ross Goodwin

- The Inner Life of an AI: A Memoir by ChatGPT by Forrest Xiao

- Bob The Robot: Exploring the Universe - A Cozy Bedtime Story Produced by Artificial Intelligence by Olle Green

- (Fun!) 50 Ways AI Would End The World: Written by AI by Rob Knott

Find links and descriptions at https://www.turingpost.com/p/books2023

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RochusMay 2020

Some of it is described here: https://ai.stanford.edu/~nilsson/QAI/qai.pdf (THE QUEST FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - A HISTORY OF IDEAS AND ACHIEVEMENTS)

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