ApsûVoyage of a Thousand Books
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Who is this book for?
- People who want to know why AI learns biases and how to correct them
- Readers interested in social issues such as algorithmic fairness and AI transparency
- Students of computing, psychology or social science who want to see how the fields meet
- People who want to understand machine learning through stories rather than formulas
Who is the author?
- Brian Christian, American author who specializes in writing about computer science alongside philosophy and psychology for general readers
- He co-authored Algorithms to Live By with the cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths
- The book was published in 2020 as The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
Other BooksAlgorithms to Live By (with Tom Griffiths)；The Most Human Human
Reading notes
🔒 Arrive at Lofoten and visit the Rowan Tree to unlock this
Sail to LofotenThe Book's Structure: Prophecy, Agency, Normativity
The book is divided into three parts of three chapters each, moving from the basics to more advanced material.
Part One, "Prophecy," deals with machine learning's predictive systems, with chapters on "Representation," "Fairness" and "Transparency"; Part Two, "Agency," deals with systems that act on their own, with "Reinforcement," "Shaping" and "Curiosity"; Part Three, "Normativity," deals with how machines learn what humans want, with "Imitation," "Inference" and "Uncertainty."
Christian draws on numerous interviews with researchers and real cases to link technical problems with human psychology and behavioral science, so that readers without a technical background can follow.
Representation: Who Is Missing from the Data
Fairness: Mathematically Impossible to Have Both
Transparency: The Black Box Is Not Inevitable
Reinforcement: Learning from Reward
Shaping and Curiosity
Imitation and Inference
Uncertainty and Corrigibility
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This world
The Sea of Books has 16 real islands, one for each subject. Every building on an island is a book.
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