Thinking Machines [Book Review]
“Thinking Machines Retrowave Style” - generated by DALL·E 2
“What unites the field of AI today?”
The book Thinking Machines by Luke Dormhel with the subtitle The Inside Story of Artificial Intelligence and Our Race to Build the Future written in the year 2016 gives an overview of where AI originated to modern use cases and important questions that need to be asked.
TL;DR Great overview of AI, but a bit out of date
Thinking Machines takes you on a trip through the early days of artificial intelligence. The early highs and lows of this field and the ever present struggle of the question: What is intelligence?
This is a great introduction and high level overview of the early days, that showcase and reflects on how much things have come along. But also that you should always be aware of the struggles in the past. There have already been AI highs and winters (lows) before and people projected unlimited possibilities only to be disappointed.
It was incredible to get this refresher of the past and what was already done in the 60s and 70s that still today seem highly advanced.
Then the book moves on to more and more modern use cases and developments. That is again interesting as this book is from 2016 and back then there was a lot of hype around self driving cars. Thus there is a big focus on this topic and it is a great reflection how hypes come and go. I don’t think if that book was written today there would be this much focus on cars, as the topic has mostly left the mainstream discussion - hype cycle?
Next comes the discussion on creativity and here again the book shows its age a bit. There where of course large language models around back in 2016 but especially in the last year we have seen leaps and bounds developments in 2022. With especially ChatGPT [https://chat.openai.com/] the discussion about AI creativity has really taken on a whole other dimension.
The opening question of this article “What unites the field of AI today?” is posed in the text. Highlighting the vast amount of use cases to which AI is applied. Of course you could say it is a technology, but that feels like a very simplistic answer. What seems to be evident is that AI is an evolution of the way we interact with machines. And at its core what unites the field of AI is the people that apply it to ever expanding use cases.
To me Thinking Machines was a solid reminder of where AI comes from and how trends and hypes shift over time. It is also valuable to be reminded of what has already been achieved in the past. But the book is dated by now has it has been well over 6 years since the initial publishing and some of the later chapters do show their age.
