Here are 100 books that Machine Learning fans have personally recommended if you like
Machine Learning.
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I’m a mathematics professor who ended up writing the internationally bestselling novel The Death of Vishnu (along with two follow-ups) and became better known as an author. For the past decade and a half, I’ve been using my storytelling skills to make mathematics more accessible (and enjoyable!) to a broad audience. Being a novelist has helped me look at mathematics in a new light, and realize the subject is not so much about the calculations feared by so many, but rather, about ideas. We can all enjoy such ideas, and thereby learn to understand, appreciate, and even love math.
A primary reason to love math is because of its usefulness. This book shows two sides of math’s applicability, since it is so ubiquitously used in various algorithms.
On the one hand, such usage can be good, because statistical inferences can make our life easier and enrich it. On the other, when these are not properly designed or monitored, it can lead to catastrophic consequences. Mathematics is a powerful force, as powerful as wind or fire, and needs to be harnessed just as carefully.
Cathy O’Neil’s message in this book spoke deeply to me, reminding me that I need to be always vigilant about the subject I love not being deployed carelessly.
'A manual for the 21st-century citizen... accessible, refreshingly critical, relevant and urgent' - Financial Times
'Fascinating and deeply disturbing' - Yuval Noah Harari, Guardian Books of the Year
In this New York Times bestseller, Cathy O'Neil, one of the first champions of algorithmic accountability, sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life -- and threaten to rip apart our social fabric.
We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives - where we go to school, whether we get a loan, how much we pay for insurance - are being made…
As a student of the markets and investing for 3 decades and a professional investment advisor overseeing billions of dollars for over 2 decades, I have discovered that most investment books and information lack real insight. Much of what I read and see is not thoughtful or deeply researched and merely a regurgitation of what everyone else is saying. I’ve learned that most of what is thought to be conventional thinking is remarkably poorly supported by independent, unbiased research. The books on my recommended list go beyond what you’d read in the average investment book to uncover truly insightful knowledge that I believe can help readers take their investment understanding to the next level.
The investment world is dominated by players who essentially have the same beliefs and say the same things. I love writers who offer a unique perspective informed by an independent framework.
One of the greatest challenges in investing is distinguishing luck from skill. Taleb does a masterful job of raising the readers’ awareness of this common oversight. I believe reading this book will make you a more thoughtful investor.
Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy - or something altogether more unpredictable?
This book is the bestselling sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets - we hear an entrepreneur has 'vision' or a trader is 'talented', but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than…
I’ve wanted to be a philosopher since I read Plato’s Phaedo when I was 17, a new immigrant in Canada. Since then, I’ve been fascinated with time, space, and quantum mechanics and involved in the great debates about their mysteries. I saw probability coming into play more and more in curious roles both in the sciences and in practical life. These five books led me on an exciting journey into the history of probability, the meaning of risk, and the use of probability to assess the possibility of harm. I was gripped, entertained, illuminated, and often amazed at what I was discovering.
I am laughing out loud, even now that I am rereading this book for the umpteenth time. Fraudsters are so clever, and so is advertising. And then there is sloppy journalism with its “wow” statistics.
I like his book enormously, not least because of its witty illustrations. It is subversive, comic, and provocative, and it makes me wise to seductive, misleading practices–and it does so with a light touch.
From distorted graphs and biased samples to misleading averages, there are countless statistical dodges that lend cover to anyone with an ax to grind or a product to sell. With abundant examples and illustrations, Darrell Huff's lively and engaging primer clarifies the basic principles of statistics and explains how they're used to present information in honest and not-so-honest ways. Now even more indispensable in our data-driven world than it was when first published, How to Lie with Statistics is the book that generations of readers have relied on to keep from being fooled.
Studying anthropology and biology in the 1970s, I was in the perfect position to understand why race was not genetic. From that time on, I wanted everyone to know what race was and was not. But here we a half century later and most individuals in the US – and the world – still believe that race is a valid way to divide individuals into biological groups, and worse, that race, rather than racism, explains differences in life circumstances. As a professor and president of the American Anthropological Association I have taught courses and helped with documentaries, museum exhibits, websites, articles, and books to dispel consequential myth about race and genetics.
The late Stephen Gould is as important as anyone in the last fifty years in showing how the idea of biological race has been used to support racism. Gould clearly dismantles this idea in this book. It is both a tour de force of science and scientific history, so well written that one forgets one is reading a scholarly book. Gould takes apart key moments in the history of race science, not just to show where they were biased, but how those biases and blind spots persist into the present. This is the definitive book on why biological race is a myth and why there is no hierarchy of intelligence by race.
When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits.
And yet the idea of innate limits-of biology as destiny-dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell…
Tim Harford is the author of nine books, including The Undercover Economist and The Data Detective, and the host of the Cautionary Tales podcast. He presents the BBC Radio programs More or Less, Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy, and How To Vaccinate The World. Tim is a senior columnist for the Financial Times, a member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the only journalist to have been made an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.
This is a clever and highly readable guide to the brave new world of algorithms: what they are, how they work, and their strengths and weaknesses. It’s packed with stories and vivid examples, but Dr Fry is a serious mathematician and when it comes to the crunch she is well able to show it with clear and rigorous analysis.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, we either hear of a paradise on earth or of our imminent extinction. It's time we stand face-to-digital-face with the true powers and limitations of the algorithms that already automate important decisions in healthcare, transportation, crime, and commerce. Hello World is indispensable preparation for the moral quandaries of a world run by code, and with the unfailingly entertaining Hannah Fry as our guide, we'll be discussing these issues long after the last page is turned.
I’m a storyteller writing on business and technology. I specialize in clear views of complex systems. When Juliette showed me her research on tech companies and AI responsibility, I saw the power of a book – the book that ultimately became The AI Dilemma. The core dilemma is that in the right hands the technology is needed, and in the wrong hands it’s dangerous. When Juliette asked me to coauthor it, I jumped at the chance. As we worked, I realized that the topic brought into focus all the research and thinking I’d ever done about human, organizational, and machine behavior.
If ever a subject deserved the sweeping hand of a highly skilled journalist/historian, it’s generative AI and machine learning. The field is shaped by its founders’ idiosyncratic and fascinating personalities.
NYTimes reporter Cade Metz observed many events first-hand. We read about Go Grandmaster Lee Sedol recovering from losing to Google’s AI by mastering the machine’s logic. We see Geoffrey Hinton flying supine because of his back problems, and the origins of Joy Buolamwini’s famous Gender Shades project.
We get the backstory to the most serious issues: like how well can AI developers be trusted to manage risk? As a journalist-historian myself, I deeply appreciate being immersed in contemporary history.
'This colourful page-turner puts artificial intelligence into a human perspective . . . Metz explains this transformative technology and makes the quest thrilling.' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs ____________________________________________________
This is the inside story of a small group of mavericks, eccentrics and geniuses who turned Artificial Intelligence from a fringe enthusiasm into a transformative technology. It's the story of how that technology became big business, creating vast fortunes and sparking intense rivalries. And it's the story of breakneck advances that will shape our lives for many decades to come - both for good and for ill. ________________________________________________
I have worked in the field of machine learning and predictive analytics for many years. Having started out as a technical specialist, I have become increasingly interested in the legal, ethical, and social aspects of these subjects. This is because it is these “soft issues” that often determine how successful these technologies are in practice and if they are viewed as a force for good or evil in wider society. This has led me to write several books focusing on the practical and cultural aspects of these subjects and how best to apply them for the benefit of business, individuals, and wider society.
As ever more powerful AI-based tools are created, Russell asks the question (and provides some answers) as to how we can ensure that we stay in the control of our creations. In particular, what safeguards are needed to protect us from something that will potentially be more intelligent than ourselves? Some might argue that this is all just science fiction and, even if it’s possible to build machines that are more intelligent than we are, it’s a problem for the distant future. However, there are many areas where AI is already making the key decisions about how we are treated. For example, whether or not to offer you a job or if you should get that loan you applied for. Consequently, I found this book to present a compelling case that controlling AI is something that we need to address as a matter of urgency, sooner rather than later.
A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines
In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable.
In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines.…
We’re a nonprofit that aims to help people have a positive social impact with their careers. Since you have, on average, 80,000 hours in your career, what you decide to do with that time might be your biggest opportunity to make a difference. Over the past ten years, we’ve conducted careful research into high-impact careers, and have helped thousands of people plan a career that has a high positive impact.
One example of an especially pressing threat facing humanity is the rapid development of artificial intelligence. If we want this new technology to go well, it needs to be ‘aligned’ – that is, it should have or act on the same values as us.
In this book, Brian sets out why aligning artificial intelligence is an extremely tricky issue and one which deserves more attention from talented and dedicated people.
Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us-and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.
Systems cull resumes until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole-and appear to assess Black…
I’ve been a geeky kid all my life. (I don’t think I’ve quite grown up yet.) Born in the 1970s, my childhood was a wonderful playground of building robots and software. I was awarded one of the early degrees in AI, and a PhD in genetic algorithms. I’ve since spent 25 years exploring how to make computers think, build, invent, compose… and I’ve also spent 20 years writing popular science books. I’m lucky enough to be a Professor in one of the world’s best universities for Computer Science and Machine Learning: UCL, and I guess I’ve written two or three hundred scientific papers over the years. I still think I know nothing at all about real or artificial intelligence, but then does anyone?
I’ve not met Harry, but he seems to have a logical and sensible head on his shoulders. His writing is considered and grounded, which is exactly what you need when discussing the hype that forever seems to surround AI. This book is another look at this topic and finds yet more ways to explain to readers the difference between human intelligence and our algorithmic attempts at intelligence – which are frequently pretty stupid.
Recent startling successes in machine intelligence using a technique called 'deep learning' seem to blur the line between human and machine as never before. Are computers on the cusp of becoming so intelligent that they will render humans obsolete? Harry Collins argues we are getting ahead of ourselves, caught up in images of a fantastical future dreamt up in fictional portrayals. The greater present danger is that we lose sight of the very real limitations of artificial intelligence and readily enslave ourselves to stupid computers: the 'Surrender'.
By dissecting the intricacies of language use and meaning, Collins shows how far…
I have worked in the field of machine learning and predictive analytics for many years. Having started out as a technical specialist, I have become increasingly interested in the legal, ethical, and social aspects of these subjects. This is because it is these “soft issues” that often determine how successful these technologies are in practice and if they are viewed as a force for good or evil in wider society. This has led me to write several books focusing on the practical and cultural aspects of these subjects and how best to apply them for the benefit of business, individuals, and wider society.
Many writers have discussed the dangers that artificial intelligence and machine learning represent to our livelihoods, and how clever computers and autonomous robots will supplant us all in the workplace. What I like about this book is that it provides an alternative, and very optimistic, view of how these new technologies are being deployed. The authors present a future based on a partnership, in which artificial intelligence-based tools work in tandem with human workers, enhancing what individuals can do in the workplace rather than replacing them.
AI is radically transforming business. Are you ready?
Look around you. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic notion. It's here right now--in software that senses what we need, supply chains that "think" in real time, and robots that respond to changes in their environment. Twenty-first-century pioneer companies are already using AI to innovate and grow fast. The bottom line is this: Businesses that understand how to harness AI can surge ahead. Those that neglect it will fall behind. Which side are you on?
In Human + Machine, Accenture leaders Paul R. Daugherty and H. James (Jim) Wilson show…
