Still looking for the perfect Christmas gift? A good book is always a great choice—especially if you’re unsure, even in electronic form. But what to choose? What one person finds thrilling, another may not. Personal taste plays a huge role, and it’s easy to miss the mark. So, how about something useful? Perhaps something on artificial intelligence? Finally understanding what all the hype is about? To be able to join in discussions and as an investment in the future. But please, not too dry and heavy on the math? Anyone who enters a bookstore with these thoughts or, worse, searches online will be overwhelmed by a flood of books.
Here are my five definitive recommendations: a fictional biography, a new kind of atlas, an interactive book for playing and experimenting, a book on the mathematics of AI that even non-mathematicians can understand, and a classic for those who want to know really, really deeply.
How It All Began: Maniac
Let’s start with context and history: The era of artificial intelligence didn’t begin with the release of ChatGPT. What connects AI with mathematical logic, military research, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, and game theory is less known. In his novel “Maniac,” Benjamín Labatut weaves these themes into a fictional biography of John von Neumann—the inventor of modern computer architecture. It’s a rollercoaster through recent history, ending with the duel between human and machine, the world’s best Korean Go player Lee Sedol, and AI AlphaGo.
The Environment: Atlas of AI
For those interested in the impacts of modern AI, but who don’t want to be blinded by the promises of the tech industry, the second recommendation is a must. Kate Crawford’s “Atlas of AI” highlights that AI is more than just a miraculous and bodiless form of machine intelligence. In this atlas, we learn about the tangible, material side of the AI industry: from the world’s lithium mines to the click farms of the global south, where “cognitive workers” prepare data for AI training for minimal wages, to automated workplaces and massive data archives, to AI training camps and the Pentagon’s algorithmic warfare team. According to Crawford, AI is primarily “a technology of extraction,” based on the exploitation of minerals, cheap labor, and an immense amount of data—and shamelessly profits from it.
The Mathematics: Why Machines Learn
For those who finally want to know how this mysterious machine learning works, I warmly recommend the third book on the list. Yes, it involves mathematics. But firstly, this mathematics is relatively simple. Secondly, Anil Ananthaswamy does something that editors usually like to cut: he repeats himself—but each time from a different perspective. This approach allows readers to understand why and especially how machines learn.
Learning Through Play: Understanding Artificial Intelligence
What happens when an artist, a musician who studied philosophy but also develops software, writes a book on the basics of AI? You get a book that’s anything but boring, despite the very technical subject matter. The casual texts and cartoons and infographics by Sophia Sanner are complemented by numerous example programs available online. Here, you can concretely try out how different methods work, how relatively simple scripts piece together text snippets, and what language models do when you tweak their parameters.
The Textbook: AI, A Modern Approach
The first encounter might be a bit intimidating: the textbook by Peter Norvig and Stuart Russell resembles an old phone book with its format and over 1,000 pages. But that’s no surprise, as the book, now in its fourth edition, covers much more than just machine learning and neural networks. When I first held this tome 15 years ago, I was quite surprised that Russell and Norvig began with a chapter on search algorithms—yes, search is also AI. Now it starts with a section on agents. But even those not interested in all the technical details will find value: the history of AI and ethical questions are also covered. It’s no wonder the work is considered the most cited textbook at universities.