Some favorite books of 2024, and further thoughts they evoke.
Artificial Intelligence
Max Bennett, A Brief History of Intelligence (2023). A grand tour of how intelligence has evolved in the biological world, from worms to humans. Especially useful to appreciate the constraints and complexity of biological brains, and to compare against today’s machine intelligence.
What constitutes intelligence and how to make machines intelligent is something I’ve explored before. Bennett does restate some material I’ve read in A Thousand Brains (2021) by Jeff Hawkins. The Master Algorithm (2015) by Pedro Domingos posits a master-algorithm as a model that decides and selects from from many different approaches underneath. This seems to be close to how the OpenAI O3 model works.
In my opinion, machine intelligence does not have to be a look-alike of biological intelligence. For example, movement is central to how brains evolved in nature, both to find food and to avoid being eaten. Computers don’t have that constraint. That said, any AGI system would need a world-model and the ability to reason, hinting at multi-sensory systems that also have a reasoning layer.
On a more technical track, Why Machines Learn (2024) by Anil Ananthaswamy is a book I’m half-way through. Anil shows the elegant mathematics behind machine learning and does not shy away from proofs, symbols and equations. Anil leans closer to a popular-science treatment, whereas An Introduction to Statistical Learning (2/Ed, 2023) is my favorite academic text on the subject. In my experience, books are probably too slow to learn AI, given how quickly the field is growing. Perhaps that’s why they tend to cover the old and stable fundamentals. A better resource is Youtube, say Andrej Karpathy.
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned (2015) by Stanley and Lehman is a book I discovered through X. Objectives pervade our lives today, but the authors, as AI researchers, note that great leaps happen through a search for novelty and interesting-ness. Objectives can be useful in the shorter term, but moonshot ideas need courage and curiosity.
Everything Else
Here are some other highlights from this year.
Non-Fiction
Dominique Roques, In Search of Perfumes (2023). The aromatics we use have a very rich and interesting history to them. This book is partly a memoir, and partly the story of the ingredients in our perfumes. The chapters on sandalwood and jasmine took me back to where I grew up!
Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire (2019). An alternative history of the United States as an imperial nation that is in denial. Incisive style, learned a lot.
Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals (2024). Little nuggets of wisdom to ponder, especially if you’re into the trappings of productivity. I’ve also previously enjoyed his book, Four Thousand Weeks (2021).
Shahnaz Habib, Airplane Mode (2023). Relatable essays on global travel in the 21st century from a third-world, immigrant perspective. I also enjoyed books by Pallavi Aiyar on Japan, China and Europe that carry the same irreverent tone.
Fiction
Vivek Shanbhag trans. Srinath Perur, Sakina’s Kiss (2023). There’s a plot, sure, but there are many different perspectives, many questions to ponder over. Big fan of his Chekhov-ian style of writing. In the past, I’ve also read his Ghachar Ghochar (2017).
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge (2008). What a character we have here of Olive, and what an observant story-teller in Strout. I’d previously watched the HBO series, but the book is a worthwhile experience.
Anton Chekhov trans. Nicolas Slater, The Beauties (2023). There are only a few stories in this new translation, but they lingered in my mind for a long time. Also enjoyed, by the same translator, Love and Youth (2021), originally by Ivan Turgenev.
Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies (2020). On the surface it’s about America and immigrants, but again, many different perspectives. Loved this book.