Artificial intelligence, also known as AI, can be an overwhelming topic to try to understand. If you aren’t sure where to start and are looking for some books about artificial intelligence, check out the following titles. This is by no means a comprehensive list! If you’re looking for more titles, let us know. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.
Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects. – Harper
An essential guide for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to use artificial intelligence to automate tasks, improve customer service, make better decisions, grow their businesses faster, and stay ahead of the AI curve.
ChatGPT, machine learning, automation, natural language processing. Every day, it seems like there is a new AI term to learn and a new promise of how it will improve your work. But with tons of conflicting information, small business owners are left wondering exactly how to leverage AI technology to grow and, more importantly, stay competitive with larger companies.
Cutting through the buzzwords and media frenzy, AI for Small Business is the road map to take you from overwhelmed to empowered. Opening with simple explanations of AI basics and clarification of myths, you are empowered to assess your goals to create a comprehensive AI strategy for your business—including information on selecting tools, a timeline for implementation, and ideas for scaling systems. This essential guide then walks you through practical AI applications for each department, informing you how to use AI to automate tasks, make better decisions, and grow your business in all areas including:
-Sales
-Marketing
-Social media and content creation
-Customer service
-Finance and accounting
-Operations and logistics
-Human resources and talent management
-Data analysis and decision-making
-Security and legal compliance
-R&D and innovation
Author Phil Pallen is a brand strategist who uses his AI expertise to help hundreds of businesses scale and grow profits. In AI for Small Business, case studies from Pallen’s successful clients illustrate how real small business owners are applying AI technology in various ways. Plus, ready-to-try prompt sidebars and specific product recommendations allow you to start employing the power of AI in real time. – Adams Media
How to Think about AI: A Guide for the Perplexed by Richard E. Susskind
Revealing the unfolding story of Artificial Intelligence, Richard Susskind presents a short non-technical guide that challenges us to think differently about AI. Susskind brings AI out of computing laboratories, big tech companies, and start-ups – and into everyday life.
In recent years, and certainly since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been massive public and professional interest in Artificial Intelligence. But people are confused about what AI is, what it can and cannot do, what is yet to come, and whether AI is good or bad for humanity and civilisation – whether it will provide solutions to mankind’s major challenges or become our gravest existential threat. There is also confusion about how we should regulate AI and where we should draw moral boundaries on its use.
In How To Think About AI, Richard Susskind draws on his experience of working on AI since the early 1980s. For Susskind, balancing the benefits and threats of artificial intelligence is the defining challenge of our age. He explores the history of AI and possible scenarios for its future. His views on AI are not always conventional. He positions ChatGPT and generative AI as no more than the latest chapter in the ongoing story of AI and claims we are still at the foothills of developments. He argues that to think responsibly about the impact of AI requires us to look well beyond today’s technologies, suggesting that not-yet-invented technologies will have far greater impact on us in the 2030s than the tools we have today. This leads Susskind to discuss the possibility of conscious machines, magnificent new AI-enabled virtual worlds, and the impact of AI on the evolution of biological humans. – Oxford University Press
More than Words: How to Think about Writing in the Age of AI by John Warner
In the age of artificial intelligence, drafting an essay is as simple as typing a prompt and pressing enter. What does this mean for the art of writing? According to longtime writing teacher John Warner: not very much.
More Than Words argues that generative AI programs like ChatGPT not only can kill the student essay but should, since these assignments don’t challenge students to do the real work of writing. To Warner, writing is thinking—discovering your ideas while trying to capture them on a page—and feeling—grappling with what it fundamentally means to be human. The fact that we ask students to complete so many assignments that a machine could do is a sign that something has gone very wrong with writing instruction. More Than Words calls for us to use AI as an opportunity to reckon with how we work with words—and how all of us should rethink our relationship with writing. – Basic Books
These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What it Means by Christopher Summerfield
An insider look at the Large Language Models (LLMs) that are revolutionizing our relationship to technology, exploring their surprising history, what they can and should do for us today, and where they will go in the future—from an AI pioneer and neuroscientist
In this accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative examination of the world’s most radical technology, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores what it really takes to build a brain from scratch. We have entered a world in which disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us – and are beginning to transform everything we do. But can AI ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?
These Strange New Minds charts the evolution of intelligent talking machines and provides us with the tools to understand how they work and how we can use them. Ultimately, armed with an understanding of AI’s mysterious inner workings, we can begin to grapple with the existential question of our age: have we written ourselves out of history or is a technological utopia ahead? – Viking
Unruly: Fighting Back When Politics, AI, and Law Upend the Rules of Business by Sean West
A bold exploration of modern business risk in a volatile world where traditional rules no longer apply
In Unruly: Fighting Back when Politics, AI, and Law Upend the Rules of Business, co-founder of software company Hence Technologies and former Global Deputy CEO of Eurasia Group, Sean West, delivers a startlingly insightful new take on how politics, technology and law are converging to upend the rules of business, generating dangerous risks and incredible opportunities. West convincingly argues that we must understand all three factors to get leverage over the future – a future filled with eroding rule of law, deepfakes that upend elections and court decisions, government pressure for businesses to be patriotic, robot lobbyists, a flood of automated legal claims pointed directly at your company and much more.
Unruly offers detailed, practical advice for how to understand the world ahead, how to be resilient in the face of innumerable and complex challenges, and how to surround your business with the people and technology you need to excel in this environment.
Inside the book:
- A framework for understanding all of the pressures on modern corporations from the convergence of geopolitics, technology and law.
- Strategies for turning your company’s legal department into a source of enduring competitive advantage
- How to navigate government pressure for nationalism when you have a global footprint
- Approaches to winning in a world where courts are politicized and the law is increasingly automated, built on interviews with top experts
- Ways to deal with the backlash to ESG at a company level
Perfect for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, founders, and other business leaders, Unruly is also a must-read for general counsels and the advisors who serve them. – Wiley
Using Artificial Intelligence: Absolute Beginner’s Guide by Michael Miller
Who knew how simple AI could be?
Using Artificial Intelligence Absolute Beginners Guide will have you getting the most of popular AI tools in no time! Heres a small sample of what youll find inside:
- Learn how AI can make everyday life easier.
- Get tips for using AI to write, gather information, get advice, and more.
- Discover how to use AI to generate imagesrealistic and fantastical!
- Examine the risks and rewards of artificial intelligence.
- Find step-by-step instructions for todays most popular AI tools, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot, and Midjourney.
- Find out how to tell when something is AI generatedso you dont get fooled by deepfakes.
Artificial intelligence can be fun and productiveif you know which tools to use and when. Using Artificial Intelligence Absolute Beginners Guide tells you all about todays major AI tools and shows how to get the best results from them. Youll learn to use AI for turning your ideas into art, writing a great email, sharpening your resume, and even sparking conversation. Instantly research everything from planning a trip to making your next big purchase. Its all a matter of picking the right AI tool and constructing the right prompt. Youll also learn to protect yourself from the risks of AI and distinguish AI fakes from the real thing. Everything you need to know is here in this book! – Pearson/AARP