AIQ goes into the basics of what it is or how it works, its not for the advanced in the field itself. That actually works for me since I am not one of those people. Its a lot about concepts and the history that led to the advancements in the field. This books helps explain recent topics in algorithms and Facebook, or the 2016 elections but doesn't go into the political positioning to choose a side to alienate any particular reader. It helps the novice understand AI and the importance of the people working with it, making the concept a lot less daunting and scary.

AI pervades the fabric of our society and its influence upon our daily lives is expanding exponentially, literally "changing the world one smartphone at a time."

In AIQ, Nicholas Polson and James Scott who are bona fide data scientists, urge us to not only embrace this technological revolution, but also to give remembrance to mostly unheralded historical figures from a much earlier time, whose mathematical theories and data-analysis forms the very bedrock of AI technology and development in its current sophisticated state. From Facebook to self-navigation cars to seeking nuclear warheads, you will be amazed at how centuries old math is still informing the math behind modern technology.

The surge in AI development in the last decade is owed to three enabling technological forces that have supercharged AI into a new age. Namely, the exponential growth in the speed of computers called Moore's law, the explosive growth in the amount of data generally available and cloud computing, all resulting in the minimising of cost and radically upscaling the computing function of powerful algorithms.

What truly enhances the reading and intellectual pleasure of AIQ, is the fact that the authors didn't seek to dumb down the subject matter, but rather took their readers by the hand and guided them in a very accessible way through the myriad of math and theory, so that we can truly appreciate and understand this complex topic in a meaningful way, with illuminating real life examples to illustrate their technical points and ultimately help readers close out AIQ with a better understanding of the digital world around us.

AIQ by Nick Polson and James Scott describes "How People and Machines Are Smarter Together" by providing a useful overview of Artificial Intelligence and associated concepts. In fact, the authors acknowledge that AI technologies bring "immense benefits" along with some "dangers to watch out for," promising that the book "will show you what you need to understand if you want to play an informed role" in the discussion of future policy on AI.

And, indeed, what makes this book AIQ so compelling is the ease with which key ideas are explained. There are only 7 chapters and each is devoted to a person who made a significant contribution to AI. For example, "The Refugee" focuses on a Hungarian-American named Abraham Wald who invented sequential sampling and worked in the 1930s and 40s with other mathematical geniuses like Milton Friedman and George Stigler. Wald helped save the lives of Allied fighter pilots and their crews during WWII by devising personalized survivability recommendations for the aircraft. Authors Polson and Scott point out the similarities to present day personalized recommendations from services like Netflix. Significantly, they note that "the key algorithms of the future are about suggestions, not search."

Throughout other chapters, Polson and Scott provide a varied set of examples and point to the presence of four trends driving the current explosion in demand and capacity for using AI to solve problems. These trends are faster chips, massive data sets (some of the figures will astound you!), cloud computing (meaning lower overhead costs) and good ideas! Polson and Scott further note that pretty much every AI system (including their examples of electric cars, cucumber sorters and credit card fraud monitors) follow the same 'pipeline of algorithms' template where "the pipeline takes in data from some specific domain, performs a chain of calculations, and outputs a prediction or a decision." I have already suggested this book to students and look forward to seeing how excited they are as they grasp simple explanations and better understand the history for seemingly sophisticated tasks. Fascinating!

This book on the current state of AI and how its used is outstanding. It's easy-to-read style makes difficult concepts easy to understand. I loved that they started each chapter with a historic background for the concepts discussed & that they had great understanding of what's happening today in AI.

I also loved that they were prudent in the assessment of AI's future & limitations. You'l find neither dystopian horror stories or unrealistic optimism here.

It's by far the best modern book on AI I've read.