My favourite books of 2021 about AI, space, science and life
2021 was difficult, but doing classes online and lockdown, I got plenty of time to read amazing books.
Here are my top 5 books of 2021 🚀
1. Life 3.0 — Max Tegmark
Written by MIT University physics professor and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, Max Tegmark raises one of the most exciting conversations of our time: artificial intelligence and what would happen if it became more intelligent than humans. Under this focus, Tegmark develops an interesting narrative that covers from the basics to scientific concepts and the important role that our present plays for the future.
“Your synapses store all your knowledge and skills as roughly 100 terabytes’ worth of information, while your DNA stores merely about a gigabyte, barely enough to store a single movie download.”
Basically, this book is about the future of artificial intelligence. How it could impact in our society and the space industry along with futuristic visions such as O’Niell’s cylinders, Dyson’s spheres, new types of energies, and interstellar travel. These ideas are very amazing and I hope they can turn into reality soon. 🚀
“The only way to continue improving will be to obtain more resources, expanding to wider and wider zones of the cosmos”
The key of this book is that it’s explained to be understood by any person as well as written in an entertaining way making you feel hooked and not as if you are reading a scientific paper or something like that.
Does this book change my mind about how I see AI? definitely yes.
I also recommend you watch the movie Transcendence. It is literally about this book.
2. Superintelligence — Nick Bostrom
This book, written by Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford University, is much more “formal” than life 3.0. Nevertheless, it embraces the most academic side of how these algorithms can overcome us. It raises the term superintelligence, and it delves into the possible paths that AI could take to become more powerful than humans but, more importantly, the challenges we would have to face if this were happened.
“If some day we build machine brains that surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. And, as the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species would depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence”
Questions like, How the human brain could be replicated? Which can be the possible ways that superintelligence could be developed? Could we control it? Could these algorithms take the control of humanity?
3. The Future of Humanity — Michio Kaku
With an optimistic perspective, Michio Kaku in this book basically what he does is: take humanity in the present and push it to the limits of the future. Combining many futuristic ideas like traveling through wormholes, getting energy from black holes, the future of genetic modification and artificial intelligence. However, what makes this book interesting and inspiring is that Dr. Kaku touches the future without departing from the laws of physics.
4. Fooled by Randomness — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
About odds, luck, markets and biases. One of the books that has changed my way of seeing the world
“Scientists are finding increasing evidence that we are specifically designed by Mother Nature to fool us”
Basically the book deals with the important role that probability and chance play in our day and in our success. Also how easy it is for shareholders, businessmen, scientists or anyone, to fall into the traps of probabilities and biases.
“We are not made to view things as independent from each other. When viewing two events A and B, it is hard not to assume that A causes B, B causes A, or both cause each other. Our bias is immediately to establish a causal link”
From this book I learned how easily our mind can be tricked under the odds, the importance of our biases when making decisions as well as identifying the situations most prone to this happening.
Unfortunately our mind is not made to handle probabilities, but with effort this can be improved. This book is the first step.
5. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A fuck — Mark Manson
About happiness, aspirations, goals and ego. It is not what one tends to think with the title, but rather in this book, Mark Manson delivers a different way of seeing life in general, suffering and the way we measure ourselves and what surrounds us.
It makes us rethink what things we give importance to life and what are the parameters with which we evaluate ourselves, situations and people.
“If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.”
“A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, ‘What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?’ Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.”
I think the internet and social networks have been a great tool but we have also had to pay a price for them. Causing more and more people to fight for standards or stereotypes that, whether they are of beauty or success, full of “false motivation” where, after all, it generates being constantly reminded of what we are not or what we lack. This is precisely the premise of this book.
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for”
What were your favourite books of 2021? 🧐
I hope you could understand (English is not my first language). Any suggestion is welcome! 👋
