Artificial Intelligence: An Illustrated History: From Medieval Robots to Neural Networks (Union Square & Co. Illustrated Histories)

Clifford Pickover is a prolific author having had more than fifty books published. His books have included The Math Book, The Physics Book, and the Medical Book. These set forth the development of the three disciplines over the centuries as a series of milestones. Now, he has recorded the history and development of Artificial Intelligence, (AI).Pickover is more than a recorder of history. He has received more than six hundred United States patents. Among them are inventions in the realm of AI. For instance, US Patent 9,651,945, “Dynamic management system, method, and recording medium for cognitive drone-swarms,” specifies a system that enables a collection of drones to perform maneuvers like those of a flock of birds.The Artificial Intelligence book consists of one-hundred milestones. For each milestone, there is a page of explanation facing a full-page image that illustrates the milestone. The images include photos, works of art, computer drawn graphics, and diagrams taken from patents. My favorite images are those accompanying the Antikythera Mechanism, the Mechanical Turk, and the Roomba. However, in that last case, Pickover has broken with the Internet meme by omitting the ubiquitous cats, which ride the robotic vacuum cleaner.The book recites two narratives, which are intertwined. There are the fictional AI machines, usually in the form of mechanical robots, which act and look more and more like human beings. Examples are Capek’s R.U.R or Blade Runner Replicants. Then there are the real AI creations. These start over two-thousand years ago as mechanical devices like the Antikythera astronomical calculator and progress to computer-driven machines that look nothing like humans, e.g., the Roomba or self-driving cars.I think of AI as machines that function as living systems do. Eventually, we may have electronic human-like robots. Fiction prefers these humanoid robots. However, the trend in real AI is toward embedded computing systems. When I drive my car, I talk to and receive navigation and other instructions from a disembodied voice that is powered by a computer embedded within the vehicle. Self-driving cars are driven by an unseen computer, not a human-like robot.Artificial Intelligence, the book, is a great read. The images are terrific. The history is enlightening. I give it my strongest recommendation.

This is a good coffee table book for parents who would like to stimulate their kid's interest in STEM. The book has a strong robotics and algorithmic slant. The book doesn't describe how our notion of 'intelligence' has developed over the years, and continues to develop.

A book by one of the most engaging and interesting science writers I have ever read. Reading his writing is a IQ boost for sure. I highly recommend his books, which are all fascinating, challenging, eccentric and entertaining.

Artificial Intelligence has a colorful, often folksy history. And we all need to get up to speed on the topic. Luckily, Cliff Pickover’s latest book is a handy, quick-study guide that will enable the reader to connect a vast amount of diverse information without doing all the painstaking research. It’s like a thrill ride through his patented “Reality Carnival” of weird attractions. We see assorted robots, mechanical humans, as well as lifelike ostriches, ducks and other automata on exhibit, along with gigantic electronic brains, lethal military robots, and even the Roomba that vacuums your floor. And because Cliff Pickover is an accomplished inventor as well as a prolific writer, he understands and relishes those basic tools of abstract thought that have enabled humans to build upon “the shoulders of giants.” He explains how such things as Tic-Tac-Toe, Aristotle’s syllogistic logic, the Abacus, Boolean algebra, and even Checkers have led us to unexpected breakthroughs like Machine Learning, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks. Speed reading thorough the book could spark a creative brainstorm in a gifted young mind. Pickover himself seems to have an AI-like grasp of the art, science, and technology behind AI’s long historical development. But there is an undertone of caution throughout his book. And there always has been among the great innovators of the scientific world as they led the way to the very thing they feared most: “the technological singularity,” where runaway AI growth poses a threat to humanity. The concept of “Swarm Intelligence” on page 149 may explain how the collective action of so many generations of scientific genius have built up a termite mound of technology that is encasing us in its AI-powered Matrix, even though the “hive mind” may feel uneasy about its monstrous possibilities. In fact, most of the smart people clearly see the land mines and booby traps that await us in the future. And yet, the group brain continues to function at maximum efficiency, building what amounts to a modern version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and doing so at an increasing velocity. So whatever you may think of AI, it isn’t going away. Therefore, we have no choice but to come to grips with it, and more importantly, with the nature of our own species—a species that seems destined to fuse with AI and spark a Cambrian explosion of Trans-human evolution through genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and mind uploading to virtual worlds. And because we may soon understand the biological basis of aging, immortality itself may be within reach. Hello X-Men! It’s a spiritual dilemma, and we need to do some sober soul-searching as we move forward. But looking down from 30,000 feet and taking the long view of time and existence, it often seems as if humans are only performing the work of Nature—a mysterious force that took the inanimate mass of the stars and molded it into self-replicating, animate life. So you might say we are only doing what comes naturally.

Expected more than a page long ai discussions.

Un contenu très sommaire et des illustrations hors de propos issues d'une quelconque base de données iconographique. L'auteur m'avait habitué à mieux, mais en math.

Excelente, es una pena que sólo quedaba uno. Ilustrado, resumido y muy bonito e interesante

Das Buch gibt kurze Überblicke über die Entwicklung von künstlicher Intelligenz.Die Mattierung des Umschlags gefällt mir nicht und kurzzeitig war ich am überlegen das Buch zurück zu schicken, da alle Informationen sehr schnell im Internet recherchiert sind und das Cover durch die Mattierung gebraucht und unschön aussieht.Jetzt liegt es zwischen meinen anderen Büchern über KI und ist hin und wieder ein unterhaltsames Werk zum stöbern bei Langeweile.Die Einträge sind sehr kurz gehalten und bieten lediglich einen Anreiz zur weiteren Recherche jeweiliger Themen.