Resources & Other Things

David Williams
May 25, 2024
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Where I go for AI news and history

As mentioned elsewhere, this newsletter is not an attempt to keep up with the latest developments in artificial intelligence.

Rather, it is an attempt to look back, as we continue to move forward — towards the 75th anniversary of Alan Turing’s famous paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” in October 2025.

Newsletters

However, there are great newsletters out there that do keep up with the latest developments, and do that well. And, there are others that I have found indispensable in understanding the current AI landscape.

If that’s more of what you are looking for, check out the following newsletters:

Books

Also, below is a list of books I have found to be valuable resources for better understanding AI and its history.

I have not finished all of them, but I have read bits and pieces of each. (Most links below are to Amazon listings, but I encourage supporting independent sellers via Bookshop whenever possible.)

Podcasts

Below are just a few podcasts that come to mind. They are not agnostic to AI topics only, but include many conversations with AI practitioners and thinkers that have helped shape my perspective on the topic.

Misc.

Below is a list of other miscellaneous learnings/insights I’ve appreciated.

Machine Learning Practical Training Courses

DeepLearning.AI is a resource for practical AI training and education, founded by Stanford professor and pioneering educator, Andrew Ng

Sam Altman’s Reading Recommendations

During an interview with Ezra Klein, in 2021, Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI was asked for reading recommendations. Here is what he shared:

SAM ALTMAN: Can I reco — both because I think they’re more likely to get read and I think they’re more relevant to this conversation. I don’t think there’s any great books about A.I., but there are good short stories. So could I recommend —

EZRA KLEIN: Go for it.

SAM ALTMAN: —short stories? “Crystal Nights” by Greg Egan, “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov, and “The Gentle Seduction” by Marc Stiegler. They’re all about the development of a super powerful A.I. in very different ways. Actually, if I can recommend a bonus fourth one. This is a blog post, not a short story, but it really touches on a lot of this societal governance power issues we’re talking about relative to A.I. “Meditations on Moloch.” It’s a blog post on Slate Star Codex. I strongly recommend that one.

Philosophy around AI

Meditations on Moloch by Slate Star Codex (Scott Alexander) is not a story, it is more of an essay, and it opens up a philosophical rabbit hole, and the whole world of Slate Star Codex and the Rationalists and Effective Altruists out in SF.

Admittedly, I do not understand all of the threads that exist her, but I have found the writing of Emile P. Torres, for Truthdig to be valuable in defining some of the thinking going on inside AI practitioner circles.

Torres is adamant that an underlying racist ideology runs through many of these lines of thought. He makes a compelling argument, but one that I admittedly have not gone deeper into understanding better. Here are some of his articles, I found helpful:

Computational Literature, or Writing with Machines

One of the sparks for this project was coming across the book, Pharmako-AI, written by K Allado-McDowell, who co-founded the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI.

Pharmako-AI is considered the first book written with a modern Large Language Model (LLM), GPT-3, and the book is considered a “landmark in computational literature.”

Here is a gifted article written by Elvia Wilk in The Atlantic that delves deeper into this topic: Pharmako-AI and the Possibilities of Machine Creativity.