As heard on NPR's Science Friday, discover the book recommended by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant: an "accessible, informative, and hilarious" introduction to the weird and wonderful world of artificial intelligence (Ryan North).

"You look like a thing and I love you" is one of the best pickup lines ever...according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog AI Weirdness. She creates silly AIs that learn how to name paint colors, create the best recipes, and even flirt (badly) with humans — all to understand the technology that governs so much of our daily lives.

We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really...and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars?

Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't. Like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world's best Halloween costume really "Vampire Hog Bride"?

In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt — and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking.

"I can't think of a better way to learn about artificial intelligence, and I've never had so much fun along the way." (Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author of Originals)

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Listening Length

5 hours and 33 minutes
Author

Janelle Shane
Narrator

Xe Sands
Audible release date

November 5, 2019
Language

English
Publisher

Voracious
ASIN

B07ZRWH5YN
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	5 hours and 33 minutes
Author	Janelle Shane
Narrator	Xe Sands
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	November 05, 2019
Publisher	Voracious
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B07ZRWH5YN
Best Sellers Rank	#33,578 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #39 in Programming & Software Development #51 in Technology & Society #319 in Social Aspects of Technology

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

642 global ratings

5 star		72%
4 star		20%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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McCain

Delightful read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 25, 2022

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As far as the seller: arrived ahead of time , great condition, absolutely no issues at all.

As far as the book it’s a whimsical but realistic view at the limitations of AI. Her blog is great to, found out about her through embeddedFM

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Amazon Customer

You are a wonderful tool.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 13, 2022

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I found this book funny and enlightening. It was simple to understand. I learned that AI is trained by its training data. Perhaps writing memos that seek to train AI will help me in the future. Especially, writing out the zeros. Zeros being dead ends and failures in the logic of a path. Also indicating determine and non determinate problems. I also have developed a love of giraffes.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Great intro into AI

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 5, 2022

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Very funny and informative book about AI. Well made. It's basically required reading for anyone talking about AI.

One person found this helpful

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Jed Rothwell

Witty introduction. Not detailed, but technically accurate

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 20, 2019

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I loved this book! I am a programmer and I have read several books about AI. This is an introduction for the general public. It does not have many technical details, but it is technically accurate. The writing is clear and understandable. It is also hilarious, with cute illustrations.

I think it has more technical details and more interesting, on-point examples than some reviewers appreciate. They see the jokes and illustrations, and they don't notice how much technical information comes along with them. For example, she describes some fascinating parallels with biological evolution and AI systems discovering method of locomotion on their own, such as making yourself into a tower and then toppling over in the direction you want to go. The author points out this is how some species of grass propagate their seeds, one stem-length, each growing season.

This is a short technical book. I like that! It reminds me of the classic "How to Lie With Statistics," by Darrell Huff, 1954, 142 pages. Everyone who wants to understand statistics should read this. It is also hilarious, it also has cute illustrations, and it is also one of the best introductions to the subject ever written.

30 people found this helpful

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Hunter S. DiCicco

Great material for introducing deep learning.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

I bought this book to support Janelle Shane because I'm a long time reader of her hilarious and insightful blog, AI Weirdness. Around half of this book is dedicated to broaching the theory, operation and common pitfalls of deep learning through examples and intuitive analogies. The rest shows some of the experiments she's done on her blog, which push the boundaries of what deep learning models can do in tasks like generating baking recipes, generating novel images of animals, and naming new colors based on the names of existing nail polish colors.

I think this book would be a great gift to a friend who has shown interest in neural networks, but is not a data scientist themselves. It's great fun and introduces normally dense topics in a way most people can understand.

2 people found this helpful

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Annette

Love this book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 4, 2022

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I love this book and mention it to friends all the time... actually, I've bought it for two friends as a gift.

One person found this helpful

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Erica V. Matos

Great, funny intro to AI

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 19, 2019

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This is a wonderful, humorous introduction to AI that is a fast read packed full of examples. It makes a great gift for friends or family who don’t know much about the field, and I imagine it would be especially interesting to teens. I loved the way she used running jokes to make connections between themes. Shane is clearly on a mission to make AI more accessible.
It’s funny, someone else said they didn’t like this book because it wasn’t enough like Shane’s tear-inducingly-hilarious blog. But here’s the thing: I can read the blog for free! I was actually nervous that I was going to be getting a repeat of the blog in book form, but it was super different. If you’re a computer science scholar, maybe skip this one, but I don’t think that was the audience Shane was trying to reach.

One person found this helpful

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M Arneson

Funny and scary, but with a bit of reassurance

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 1, 2019

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Reassuring and disturbing at the same time, this book exposes the flaws and risks of AI, while pointing out the weaknesses that make it incapable of taking over the world.

The examples of AI foolishness entertain and startle. AI's missteps and errors and the real harm they cause provide a warning that is easier to absorb when leavened with the humor.

So what happens if I end this review with a bit of AI-generated predictive texting? Here goes:

This is a story out of India and I am not sure if I can make it to the wrong email address. Please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

WARNING: DONT BUY KINDLE EDITION

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 29, 2019

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it's a great book and the author deserves 5 stars but the kindle edition is badly flawed having too mamy unreadable diagrams, cartoons and tables. Also there are paragraphs which have important meaning conveyed by the light/dark mix of text... all black on a kindle!

32 people found this helpful

niksgarage

Eases you in ..

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 16, 2019

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This isn't my first book about AI, but it's the first that I stuck with. It starts slow, and gently takes you through all of the possibilities and pitfalls in an easy to understand way. My industry - Healthcare - is hugely enthusiastic about the possibilities, and are not thinking about the pitfalls. This is AI's third attempt at making inroads, and though its adoption will eventually make a huge difference, it is a journey that we are making together as we understand how to build the data models without introducing bias, or producing unexpected results. Having read this book, I feel that I can engage with clinicians who are hungry to get going, without sounding cynical but being pragmatic about how we move forwards.

5 people found this helpful

Dr. P. Denny

Entertaining and cautionary description of AI

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 12, 2021

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A short but very readable, entertaining and informative book on the shortcomings of AI, with cited references, certainly the best collection of such that I've seen in one place. It provides some important insights for all stakeholders in AI, which is all of us. Some of the occasional cartoon images are a bit difficult to discern on the Kindle (and there are some typos and formatting errors), which is the only reason why I docked it a star.

3 people found this helpful

hawkman

Fun and approachable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

Very amusing and insightful book. Organisation of the content seems a bit arbitrary sometimes — lots of overlap between chapters — but that content itself is brilliant. Very approachable, yet manages to give good, relatable insights into the inner workings of different AIs and why they act in the sometimes peculiar ways that they do.

3 people found this helpful

Clayton black

Wouldn’t spend the time or the money if you want to get even a basic understanding of AI

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

As someone who had done some courses on AI and ML, personally I find this book very confusing and misleading and generalises many different areas of AI into an indistinguishable mush. I also wasn’t fussed on many of the nonsense examples, an attempt to interject humour (e.g. the sandwich ejecting blackholes) but just feels like waffle when for many myself and many people having real life examples would be so much more beneficial. Disappointed because I read a good review elsewhere but was very underwhelmed by the substance.

4 people found this helpful

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You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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