7 Classic Books To Deepen Your Understanding of (Artificial) Intelligence Posted on : Dec 24 - 2019

The field of artificial intelligence has never been the subject of more attention and analysis than it is today. Almost every week, it seems, a new bestselling book comes out examining the technology, business or ethics of AI.

Yet few of the topics and debates at the center of today's AI discourse are new. While not always recognized by commentators, artificial intelligence as a serious academic discipline dates back to the 1950s. For well over half a century, many of the world's leading minds have devoted themselves to the pursuit of machine intelligence and have grappled with what it would mean to succeed in that pursuit.

Much of the public discourse around AI in 2019 has been anticipated—and influenced—by AI thought leaders going back decades.

Below is a selection of seven classic books about intelligence: what it is, how we might build machines that have it, and what that would mean for society. These books have played a formative role in the development of the field of AI; their influence continues to be felt today. For anyone seeking a deep understanding of AI's complexities, challenges, and possibilities, they are essential reading.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas Hofstadter, 1979)

Gödel, Escher, Bach is sometimes referred to as “the Bible of artificial intelligence” (though Hofstadter himself rejects the label).

The book's central theme is that, through self-reference and “strange loops”, systems comprised of independently meaningless elements can acquire meaning and intelligence. Hofstader identifies versions of such recursive systems in fields as diverse as mathematics, music, art and computer science.

To sketch out his subtle thesis, Hofstadter takes his reader into the depths of number theory, classical music and the computing technology stack; he employs fanciful dialogues between fictional characters in the style of Lewis Carroll; he structures the book’s chapters, paragraphs and sentences to themselves embody his points about recursion.

Though Hofstadter was an unknown author at the time, Gödel, Escher, Bach won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. View More