in general, i'm a fan of the "for dummies" series, the concept is awesome.
with this, specifically, i was not disappointed.
for someone in a related field, it's great, it really gives you the zero to good enough basic general knowledge. for someone who does not understand probability or even how computer science works, it's possible it may feel too technical, since these things get mentioned a bit...but there should be a computer science and game theory in the "for dummies" series too :)
i thought it was great for general knowledge. i am in computer science but not really in AI, so this was pretty much what I expected, a good intro and also lots of context and applications with examples.
as a note, this was written for 2018 (what I found available on Audible), and I've read it in 2025, it would be great if the author/company expanded the book and published (on Audible too) an updated version to include latest interesting breakthroughs from the field maybe every 5 years, or at least every 10 years...this field is definitely in its "summer" period now, blooming and fruitful.
going for the latest (now 2024 Kindle) edition is probably recommend in this case.
some general notes from the book, and what to expect:
reactive machines
theory of mind
learning from data, learning from examples
problem solving types: symbolism (logical approach, inverse deduction to solve problems, given a conclusion and data find the path to the conclusion, inferring logical relationships), connectionism (back propagation to solve problems, fine-tuning weights to fit a gradient function, adjusting parameters), evolutionism (evolution programming to solve problems, random mutations to solutions and choosing the better outcome at each step), bayesian (probabilistic inference to solve problems, updating probabilities based on evidence), kernel machines to solve problems
neural networks, simulation the mechanism from biology, complex networks of interconnected algorithmic mechanisms called neurons, where each neuron gets a pass/fail function to permit the input to move further in the network, altered, or not, based on the case
inputs which fail in the neuron can be reprocessed in specific ways (feedback or a separate connected network) or ignored further
CNN (convoluted neural networks), RNN (recurrent neural networks)
collecting data, data consistency (is it the data needed or enough), storing data, data reliability (is the data good, omissions, bias, corruption, frame of reference), processing/extracting data (including aligning data from different sources), searching data, analysing data, data retention policies
AI can give worse output with too much data.
making things faster: caching, processor caching, preloading, specialty RAM, multithreading.
complex AI models rely on acquiring and processing their own data
the better the data the better the AI
AI can suffer from data corruption
AI breakthroughs (the end of “AI winter”) happened with the increase in processing power and data quality and quantity
complex AI systems can be made up of several individual AI models meant to specialise in a specific part of the problem, but they do not function completely independently, they influence each other’s inputs and settings
adversarial AI example, image generation: one AI generates, one AI decides if the generated image is good enough and adjusts inputs and/or settings for the other AI until the image generated passed as good enough
deep learning is a term used for complex AI systems, they are not necessarily the same type of system
the general idea behind robotics, drones, self-driving cars, space applications
discussions about AI being able to achieve true intelligence, with notes on the main weaknesses: creativity, emotion and natural attachment, interpersonal awareness, motivation
it seems like a few things contained in the 2024 3rd edition which are not in the 1st edition are: AI powered bot nets application and security, deep learning processors (designed and pre-configurated to work with AI model work), generative AI (also a bit more about CNN and RNN, ChatGPT, self-attention models which help with context for data, NLP processes, word embeddings and semantic similarity, WORD2VEC and FastText, simultaneously applying attention models over multiple parts of the data to build a "transformer" architecture, LLMs and how they can predict the next word based on a prompt, a vast amount of pre-trained context data and what was generated before, diffusion models which work by adding noise or variability into the data and learn to remove it in order to generate new data which is of the same category as the initial input data but not too similar, Deep Q-learning & networks DQL & DQN which aim to calculate the value for the best outcome of a move/step through deep neural networks while comparing it with and adapting based on it a "target network" with the best possible predicted values, applications, deep fakes and implications, AI errors, hallucinations and model drift which limit the true applicability of AI contradictory to popular opinion, the importance of supporting infrastructure to enable AI capabilities), AI ethics, extra applications and examples.
as a comparison, the 1st edition does not feel outdated compared to the (now latest) 3rd edition, just incomplete. obviously, the getting the latest edition is recommended if an option.