The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future Paperback – 7 Jan. 2021

This book is well worth a read. Probably my favourite book of 2020 so far. It is not an explanation of how AI works, as much as it is a discussion around the philosophies of AI, and because of that, I was able to get into it! I am not technically minded, and a complex book about the workings of AI would not have worked for me. This I understand though.

The central theme is very interesting, although there is a bit of a wander through the tracks taken to arrive at the current position.The successor to AlphaGo was never programmed 'how to learn or how to play' just these are the rules. it trained itself in a few days and now beats AlphaGo every time.So can we manage AI at all?

I tried to read Superintelligence and found I lacked even Sufficientintelligence. Fortunate then that the author of this book (with a handful of digressions) does an excellent job of bringing this topic to life and in the process, sensitively recognising the efforts of the nerds who may just save us all.

I bought this book for my son-in-law on the advice of my daughter. So don't know what its like to read, sorry. He seemed to like it!

I think it's very informative. Simplifies how AI works and some of its problems. It starts by saying it's wrong to have this Terminator top of mind of "AI goes wrong" but the paperclip analogy is nothing but the Avengers Age of Ultron plot.It then goes describing the group of the Rationalists... Which I think makes the purpose of the book fuzzy: is it about the safety of AI or about the Rationalists?I read the book because I happened to be at a conference with the author and he sold the idea quite well... I don't think his book is as good as the talk he gave that day.Having said that, not a bad book.

Excellent. I love the ideas, I love the characters, I love the tone.I'd like to buy the author a beer, so if you're reading this, Tom, and you're ever anywhere near Chester, give me a shout.If you're not Tom, just buy the book.

This book has very little to do with AI and I am not really sure why it is in the title. He spends a lot of time defending the rationalists, talking about everything from feminism to polyamorous relationships.He seems to rely on people like Yudkowsky who is an AI expert but then spends most of his time talking about stuff totally unrelated to AI. Why didn't he speak to a lot of AI experts as well?I am 75% the way through and have found it extremely disappointing. Not sure I will make it to the end which is extremely rare for me, I can only recall once before I have stopped reading a book before the end.

Informed, informal and very, very interesting, and there is nothing stuffy about it. Reading this book is like being in conversation with a lively and well informed friend.