Hi, I’m considering a few books as Christmas gifts, and I’d like your opinion about which one would be the best choice: ofc it’s ok to suggest something outside of this list. Also, since I understand the list is quite long, it’s ok if you don’t have an opinion about all the books in it. Just let me know which one you’d choose and why. Requirements:

• somewhat technical but not a textbook (I mean, if I didn’t have it already, personally I’d love to receive https://www.amazon.com/Reinforcement-Learning-Introduction-Adaptive-Computation/dp/0262039249 as a gift, but alas, most of my loved ones wouldn’t appreciate). It would be also ok to select a more technical one and a less technical one, because I have different possible recipients in mind.
• recent (that’s one of the reasons why https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ didn’t make it on the list)
• must be about AI and ML

Having said that much, let’s get on with the list:

• https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Guide-Thinking-Humans/dp/0374257833 is this good, or is it BS like the Gary Marcus’ book? The Amazon reviews of course don’t count, at least 10 out of 11 are clearly written by neophytes. I heard the book is quite critical of current trends in AI research, which might be good if the critique is well-articulated. But I also heard the book criticizes the ImageNet dataset, which was fundamental for ML progress in Computer Vision and beyond, so I’m skeptical. I don’t know much about the author’s research: doesn’t seem to have published much in conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc. so I’m not sure about her qualifications as an expert on the subfield of AI she decides to talk about. On the other hand, apparently both Anima Anandkumar and Thomas Dietterich had good words for the book, and they’re definitely experts in the field. What do you say?

• https://www.amazon.com/Human-Compatible-Artificial-Intelligence-Problem/dp/0525558616/ I mean…Stuart Russell! This has to be good! Right?! Right?! Please tell me I’m right 🙂

• https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Illustrated-Intelligence-Addison-Wesley/dp/0135116694 I don’t know much about this book and given the cover, I was inclined to dismiss it. But a popsci book which mentions both the Neocognitron and LeNet-5 must be up to something!

• https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Medicine-Artificial-Intelligence-Healthcare/dp/1541644638/ another book I don’t know much about. I don’t like the narrow focus on one application, but on the other hand I heard the author knows his stuff, so that’s cool

• https://www.amazon.com/Army-None-Autonomous-Weapons-Future/dp/0393356582 I don’t know much about this book, but I heard good things about it

• https://www.amazon.com/You-Look-Like-Thing-Love/dp/0316525243 I like the cover 😀 again, I don’t know much about it

• https://www.amazon.com/Book-Why-Science-Cause-Effect/dp/046509760X/ I have mixed feelings about this one (I especially hate the author’s attitude towards statisticians and economists, it’s not like he’s the only one who actually dealt with causal inference)

• https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Transformation-Survive-Thrive-Extinction/dp/1948122480/ I know the author and I frankly cannot believe this is a bestseller in the Computer Science section…but ok, I’ll bite the bullet and hear your opinion about it.

• https://www.amazon.com/Big-Nine-Thinking-Machines-Humanity/dp/1541773756/ the author is a renown tech journalist and professor, but from a quick glance at the ToC, this seems some sort of Singularity crap. Am I wrong?