Book Reviews: Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell and Beyond the Known by Andrew Rader

I would like to recommend two excellent books.  They were Christmas gifts which I thoroughly enjoyed and savored.  Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mitchell takes the historical approach for introducing us to the field. Substantial activity begins in the 1950’s,  within the first decade of digital computers. This period saw the introduction of many of the basic approaches that are still being pursued today. I was happy to learn about neural networks and how that avenue of investigation has evolved through the decades. I had heard the term for many years but never took the time to investigate. Also critical to the story was the intense activity in teaching a computer system to play games, including checkers, chess, Go, and Atari games. Incredible progress has been achieved the past decade in language translation, pattern recognition, and self-driving. Though Mitchell acknowledges  grand achievements to date, the field has often been over hyped and is careful not to do that.   She has spent her career in this field and made contributions, so her perspective is important. I plan to read some of her other books.  In finishing she notes that considerable hurdles remain before a computer will be able to pass the well-known Turing Test.  Here is how she closes:

“The impacts of AI will continue to grow for all of us. I hope that this book has helped you, as a thinking human, to get a sense of the current state of this burgeoning discipline including its many unsolved problems, the potential risks and benefits of its technologies, and the scientific and philosophical questions it raises for understanding our own human intelligence. And if any computers are reading this, tell me what it refers to in the previous sentence and your’re welcome to join in the discussion.”

The second book, Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars by Andrew Rader. It was very much like a condensed version of one of my favorite books, The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin, which I read almost forty years ago. The theme of Beyond the Known is the role of exploration in the story of human advancement. It starts with the migration of out of Africa many millenia ago and then proceeds to cover human history since. Both books contained riveting descriptions of the era from Marco Polo followed by the voyages of discovery around the southern tip of Africa and shortly thereafter to the Americas. Beginning in the 20^th century, air and space flight receives the emphasis. Rader works at SpaceX and is well suited to describe the most recent forty years that postdate Boorstin’s book. He discusses how we might make Mars and other places in the solar system suitable for human environment and even discusses interstellar travel. It closes with

“The challenges we face today are no more daunting than they’ve been in the past, and the rewards no less meaningful. Pushing our boundaries is the best way to expand them, and to unite humanity in common purpose. Will we turn from this calling and abandon exploration? I don’t think so.  There will always be wanderers among us.”