Fundamental Intelligence Volume I, paints a cross-disciplinary big picture of the foundations and fundamentals of AI, machine learning and cognitive science for a public audience. Takes you from history all the way to the dynamics of the cutting edge. Gives you massive depth and insight that is lacking from other texts on the subject. It uniquely puts it all together, and explains that the word intelligence has only been used symbolically. Thus, the title of this volume is “AI as a Label”! It argues how the existing foundations are not satisfying if we are serious about intelligence and proposes a fundamental rethinking of natural and artificial intelligence.
Who Is This Book for and What May You Get out of It?
Your background or education shouldn’t matter. Only your interest in the topic matters. It’s written so that anyone could follow. It gives you the insights that you’d otherwise have to get from knowing a lot of math, reading thousands of academic papers, and thinking about them deeply.
The content is both broad and deep and should appeal to both the very beginner and the very advanced mind in AI. You don’t learn how to write AI programs from this book. There are plenty of other resources for that. Instead, you may learn what to make of things, how to think of them differently, and gain the perspective needed to be a better judge of new ideas.
It would best serve those AI enthusiasts or professionals who want to
- See how all the topics and methods relate to each other and to build a concise conceptual map, without the need to dive deep into the weeds of lots of technical papers, which is understandably impractical for many;
- Get more foundational depth around AI, and separate out what really matters;
- Just build some good judgement, intuition and understanding without the big words and the unnecessary technical language of the esoteric treatments;
- Apply that depth to any of the ongoing debates you may find yourself a part of, articles you read or the research that you conduct;
- Draw a more careful and educated guess as to where we are and how far off from certain capabilities in AI;
- Generally gain a different perspective in many relevant AI topics and a sobering perspective on how much we really don’t understand.