As titled, the entire book is an optimal guide for all thinking humans. The author begins the book with a sketch of the history of AI research from its birth in the 1950s, and outlines its key figures and significant ideological branches. These are broadly classified as symbolic (conscious reasoning) and sub-symbolic (sub-conscious learning) with the latter being biologically inspired structures which learn patterns and rules via lots of data.
Robert Sapolsky sums up that we do not have ‘free will’ because our actions resulted from prior causes, which themselves resulted from prior causes, which….., corollary with the answer Einstein got over a question on how the Earth is balanced – Turtles all the way down (a seamless chain of causality stretching back in time), and uses a very sensible way of explaining ‘no free will’ on a large and small scale connecting both in the same instance. He leads us through this causal chain of events that goes back to seconds (caused by neurons firing), to minutes (caused by a thought, memory, emotion, or sensory stimulus), hours to days (hormones), to months (long-term experiences, e.g. depression), to years and decades (e.g. childhood, genetics), and centuries (the culture of ancestors).
Khan's book serves as an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to understand the i
The book starts with “where we stand” in terms of epochs with the present one being a merger of bio-science with technology. The idea th...
