November 2022

Shane has a PhD in electrical engineering and a masters in physics. She writes about artificial intelligence and the funny but sometimes unsettling ways that algorithms get human things wrong.

There are lots of serious conversations underway about the way in which artificial intelligence is being used in all sorts of different areas of our lives, and what the future may hold and these conversations really matter.

This book is a serious intellectual piece of work but it is also a hugely entertaining look at how this technology learns, fails and adapts. It is not an easy thing to do, making a reader feel both entertained as well as educated, but Shane does it brilliantly.

The title (You Look Like a Thing and I Love You) is, according to an artificial intelligence programme designed by the author, one of the best pickup lines ever!

Behind the funny, often crazy descriptions and contemplations, Shane helps us to navigate the world of AI - what it is, what it isn't, what it's good at, what it’s not, and what our AI future may look like.
Shane reminds us, by making these issues accessible and engaging, that AI is not the preserve of technologists, it is something relevant to each one of us.

“To take the best way forward with AI, we’ll have to understand it - understand how to choose the right problems for it to solve, how to anticipate its misunderstandings, and how to prevent it from copying the worst of what it finds in human nature. There’s every reason to be optimistic about AI and every reason to be cautious. It all depends on how well we use it.”

Wise words.