It’s the end of August, the weather in the UK has turned so it’s the end of evenings sitting in the shade of the garden reading. I was writing a first draft of my next book (hopefully out next autumn) through August, but also managed to read a lot (a measure of how much time is usually eaten up by meetings).
Starting with work-related ones, I did quite well on this front this month.
Ungoverning by Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum. A rather interesting argument that that the programme of the Trump Administration and the Republicans/reactionary right more broadly is literally to dismantle the administrative state. It makes total sense.
The AI Paradox by Virginia Dignum discusses AI in terms of eight paradoxes. They didn’t all seem like paradoxes so I wasn’t sure about the device, but certainly agree with the main one that AI makes everything human more important.
Divination Engines by Xiaochang Li is a history of natural language programming, describing the interesting shift from audio and telecommunications to text and computation. I enjoyed this as there were all kinds of things I didn’t know in here.
Coding Capitalism by Devin Kennedy. I enjoyed this one too. It covers some of the familiar territory about the interaction between capitalism and computing in the postwar era, at least familiar to people who have read books like Jill Lepore’s If Then, but with a particular focus on financialisation.
Why Machines Learn by Anil Ananthaswamy was recommended to me as a good text. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The first half or so is based on the maths and statistics familiar to me from graduate econometrics and micro. Even though it is pretty simplified, only quite mathematically-literate readers will stick with it. The second half was newer to me, about generative AI, convolutional neural networks and the like and really quite helpful. Again, though, the technicalities would be not enough for computer science folks but might put others off. It isn’t a textbook for computer science students nor is it a general read. But it is probably useful for economists who think they should get their heads around ML. The similarities to our familiar maths/stats are uncanny. It made me wonder whether there had been some overlap between the intellectual history of the two disciplines I’m not aware of, although I certainly haven’t read about it.
Thinking AI by John MacCormick actually covers some of the same technical ground, albeit in the service of arguing that machine consciousness is emerging. The logic seems flawed to me. It’s: computer neural networks are similar to human neural networks because they’re designed that way. Yes, he accepts, we know they don’t work the same way as the human brain (we humans don’t do backpropogation for example). But there are emergent phenomena of generative AI models. Therefore …. machines think. Hm. But I’m keeping an open mind. Blaise Aguera Y Arcas’s book What Is Intelligence was quite persuasive.
The Nerd Reich by Gil Duran rounds off this month’s tech (book) stack. Very readable, absolutely alarming.
On the non-work front:
Hookland Fragments by David Southwell. I’ve known David since I was a journalist and he was at a trade body i.e. a very long time. I really enjoy his Hookland, both imagined and very real.
The Second Traitor by Alex Girlis. A pacy spy thriller by our friend and neighbour.
Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea. One of my monthly surprises from Daunt Books, a good summer blockbuster.
The Rose Field by Philip Pullman. I read the whole series up to this so had to finish it, but you have to be a fan. I couldn’t manage to read the banal Harry Potter books although our eldest devoured them, so I went with His Dark Materials and then the less compelling Book of Dust.
The Secret Sharers by Qiu Xiaolong. I quite like these detective novels set in Shanghai although it isn’t detecting as we know it. There’s a lot of background especially about what people eat, always of interest to me.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout. Bleak.
Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan. Detective novel set in 1950s Bombay. Very readable.
The Appointment by Herta Muller. My goodness, Ceaucescu’s Romania was grim. I now feel I’ve done my duty by this Nobel literature laureate.
The Vegetarian by Han Kang. And probably by this one too. This is also a depressing read by the end, although it starts amusingly.
A Death in Summer by John Banville. Detective novel set in 60s Ireland. Constant smoking. Brilliantly written, brilliant characterisation.
The Pledge by Friedrich Durenmatt. The latest Daunt Books surprise. I didn’t know he’d written novels. Love the plays, enjoyed this too. You can tell it’s by the author of The Visit. Although it’s also rather bleak.