AI4LAM Reading Group - Summer 2024 Book Recs

It's time for the summer break! What are we recommending from the area of AI and data science? The popularization of generative AI since November 2022 has us sticking to material from after that time.

Our group is currently reading Unmasking AI by Joy Buolamwini (Oct 2023). This is also a book selected by the Summer 2024 Data Book Club (hosted by the Harvard U Statistics Dept). This memoir explores the author's growing passion for evaluating the image databases that feed the AI machine.

Our most recent read was Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action by Catherine D'Ignazio (April 2024). As said in the text, this book is "a love letter to the data activists, data journalists, nonprofits, political collectives, and academics that work to defend life in small, networked, relational, transnational, grassroots, informatic ways across the Americas." There is a free version available, and half the royalties from purchased texts is directed to Indigenous Women Rising. The hardback text is coffee-table beautiful.

Just released, Ray Kurzweil's new book, The Singularity is Nearer (June 2024), may prove to be the pinnacle of Techno-Optimism.

For those seeking a monumental work, try An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with Machines from Descartes to the Digital Age by David W. Bates (April 2024).

A recent read was CoIntelligence by Ethan Mollick (April 2024), a fun, practical text, happy to lead you down the primrose path of the benefits generative AI brings to academia.

We are unofficial, self-organized, ad hoc, and welcome everyone. Join us on the AI4LAM Slack channel #reading-group where we exchange links to books, articles, and interviews. Our monthly meetings typically take place at 9:30 am PT/12:30 pm ET on occasional Fridays.