Publication Day Desk (Sofa!)
Congratulations to Christopher Summerfield whose brilliant guide to AI These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means is published by Viking Penguin today in the UK, and by Viking Penguin in the US on 11 March.
Continuing the tradition of publishing on our website on publication day a photo of the desk where the book was written, we feature today a sofa, because that is where Chris tells us he wrote the book. That makes sense for a book that aims to make readers comfortable with understanding how generative AI works, and to give us the tools to follow and contribute to the urgent debate about how it should be used.
A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times
— Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind
By far the best guide to a newly emerging species with which we will share the planet for the foreseeable future — Stuart Russell, author of Human Compatible
As a leading authority in both computational neuroscience and the social impacts of AI, Christopher Summerfield is perfectly situated to explore the meaning and implications of these machines that are so uncannily like – and unlike – ourselves — Brian Christian, co-author of Algorithms to Live by
Summerfield takes us on a tour of this astonishing new technology - general purpose AI - and helps us to understand the issues it raises. You might choose to be alarmed, excited, or indifferent to large language models but you should read Chris’s book before you decide — Mike Woolridge, author of The Road to Conscious Machines
With clarity, insight and wit, Summerfield dives beneath the ever-breaking wave of large language models to reveal the deeper principles at play, and the challenges and opportunities that these powerful new technologies present. An essential and highly readable guide to thinking abut how, and whether, computers can think, what's coming next and what we should do about it — Anil Seth, author of Being You
Chris has already been interviewed in The Times, and there is more coverage to follow including an appearance at the Charleston Festival on 25 May.
