Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (with a New Preface)

Named One of the Five Best Books on AI by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal

No technological development in recent history has generated as much excitement and terror--both utopian visions and apocalyptic nightmares--as artificial intelligence. Since generative AI and large language models exploded into our everyday lives in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, AI has been the topic on everyone’s mind. And the award-winning author and leading computer scientist Melanie Mitchell’s acclaimed Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans has been a touchstone for the debates.

With a new preface situating the book in the context of AI’s rapid progress, Artificial Intelligence offers an essential account of AI’s turbulent history and an accessible explanation of the different kinds of AI: how they work, how they fail, and how they compare to human intelligence and understanding. Along the way, Mitchell 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. Raising big questions about the nature of intelligence itself, she consults with fellow experts and 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 and captivating accounts of the most interesting and provocative work in the field. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today’s AI and its impact on the future for us all.

Melanie Mitchell has a PhD in computer science from the University of Michigan, where she studied with the cognitive scientist and writer Douglas Hofstadter; together, they created the Copycat program, which makes creative analogies in an idealized world. The author and editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers, she is currently a professor of computer science at Portland State University and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.