Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Understanding Artificial Intelligence


‘Can machines think?’

When Alan Turing posed this question in 1950, Artificial Intelligence was a thought experiment. Today, it’s writing our emails, moulding our search results, and occupying the centre of debates worldwide. Perhaps a more pressing question now is: Can we keep up?

Whether you are curious, sceptical, or just overwhelmed by the buzz, the Sainsbury Library invites you to consider the practical applications and unexpected consequences of AI in our new display: ‘Understanding Artificial Intelligence’.

All featured materials can be accessed via the links below (Oxford SSO required) or in person at our display in the Lower Reading Room. To explore further, visit our Business of AI LibGuide.


Video Resources

The AI Pocketbook: Video Edition
“Everything you need to know about AI to survive–and thrive–as an engineer. If you’re worried about your tech career going obsolete in a world of super-powered AI, never fear. The AI Pocket Book crams everything engineers need to know about AI into one short volume you can fit into your pocket”

Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
“Given the rapid pace of progress in AI, many predict that it could advance to human-level intelligence within the next several decades. From there, it could quickly outpace human intelligence. What do these developments mean for the future of the mind?”

The Role of AI in Business Development
“Mariusz Soltanifar, a researcher in corporate entrepreneurship and marketing lecturer at the Hanze International Business School in Groningen in the Netherlands, uses the Alexa Artificial Intelligence platform as an example to explore both artificial intelligence and the market for it”

Audio Resources

The AI-Savvy Leader: 9 Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work
“This book helps leaders retake control of the wildly rapid deployment of AI across organizations. It outlines cleanly and concisely nine actions leaders need to take to successfully steward a transition to a more AI-centric future that will lead to growth for all-companies and workers-and avoid the kinds of mistakes that author David De Cremer has seen many early adopters already make”

How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed
“In How to Think About AI, Richard Susskind draws on his experience of working on AI since the early 1980s. For Susskind, balancing the benefits and threats of artificial intelligence is the defining challenge of our age. He explores the history of AI and possible scenarios for its future”*

eBooks

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
“The idea of artificial intelligence–job-killing robots, self-driving cars, and self-managing organizations–captures the imagination, evoking a combination of wonder and dread for those of us who will have to deal with the consequences. But what if it’s not quite so complicated?”

The AI Ladder
“AI may be the greatest opportunity of our time, with the potential to add nearly $16 trillion to the global economy over the next decade. But so far, adoption has been much slower than anticipated, or so headlines may lead you to believe. With this practical guide, business leaders will discover where they are in their AI journey and learn the steps necessary to successfully scale AI throughout their organization”

Print Books

A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence
“From Oxford’s leading AI researcher comes a fun and accessible tour through the history and future of one of the most cutting edge and misunderstood field in science: Artificial Intelligence”

Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI
“Professor Ethan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, he urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach”

The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma
“As cofounder of DeepMind, the pioneering AI company now owned by Google, Mustafa Suleyman has witnessed firsthand just how rapidly our technology is advancing-and how flawed our approaches to grappling with these changes are. The coming decades, he argues, will be defined by a burst of innovation, an inevitable wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies across fields like synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing”

Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future
Superagency offers a roadmap for using AI inclusively and adaptively to improve our lives and create positive change. While acknowledging challenges like disinformation and potential job changes, the book focuses on AI’s immense potential to increase individual agency and create better outcomes for society as a whole”


For more resources, see our posts about other recent book displays.

Photograph of the AI book display in the Sainsbury Library.

Welcome to the World of AI

Step into the Sainsbury Library and explore the fascinating, fun, but sometimes frightening, world of Artificial Intelligence with our book display in the lower reading room. AI is ubiquitous in many people’s daily lives and is impacting and raising questions in all areas of businesses. With AI ‘creating’ art, films, music and novels; aiding doctors, researchers and patients in the life-saving work of medicine; and assisting both defensive and offensive forces in wars. For some, the rapid growth and innovation of AI represents a golden opportunity for business, humans, and the future of our world. However, for others, AI spells impending doom, with visions of mass unemployment and even the end of the world. For both, AI is a tool that makes the imagined events of Sci-fi-the good, the bad, and the fun-a reality.

The Sainsbury Library’s display, ‘Welcome to the World of AI’, has books ranging from the threats and opportunities of AI in business and economics, the history of AI, the ethics of AI, and even chess and AI. We hope you will find something of interest to you, whether you are a doomsayer, optimist, or have no idea what AI is all about!

Please note all books are available on-line, unless otherwise specified. Please click on the links provided or even better come and browse the colourful display in-person and scan our QR codes!

General and Philosophy

Business

Further resources

For more resources see our Business of AI LibGuide.

The O’Reilly learning platform and Gartner research library both provide free access to expert-created and curated information covering all the areas that will shape our future – including artificial intelligence.

Online Learning with O’Reilly

Gartner Campus Access

Garner website being accessed on an iPad. Image by rawpixel.com.

Gartner Campus Access

The University now provides full access to the Gartner research library (log in with your Oxford SSO).

Gartner is the global leader in providing accurate and current research for the IT industry and its research library helps translate complex IT issues into comprehensive advice and meaningful analysis. The Gartner research library provides access to current research, analytics and insights that are accurate, impartial, and consistent. The benefits of Gartner include the combined expertise of 2,300 research analysts and consultants who advise executives in 130 countries every day. They publish tens of thousands of pages of original research annually and answer 340,000 client questions every year.

See the LibGuide for more information.

Online Learning with O’Reilly

Free access to expert-created and curated information covering all the areas that will shape our future – including artificial intelligence, operations, data, UX design, finance, leadership, and more.

The O’Reilly online learning platform (formerly known as Safari Books Online) includes an on-demand digital library providing books, videos, interactive tutorials, and live online classes, including titles from O’Reilly, Packt, No Starch Press, Wiley, Princeton University Press, and others.

This resource requires you to log in with your Oxford SSO again at the O’Reilly homepage.