Book Club
How the Book Club works
Every 2 months the Book Club members receive an email with 3 books to choose from for their next meeting. After a week, results with the final selection are sent to everyone, so that all members have time to order and read (at least some of!) the book. At the end of the following month members meet up and discuss. Sometimes the authors join in. Sign up for the newsletter because we also attach discount codes from publishers. Check the Global Events Calendar, your email and the pinned messages at Slack for the date of the next meeting. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
Book Club Newsletter
Sign up for Book Club updates and to vote for the next books
I have a question/ book suggestion/ funny dog picture. Whom do I contact?
Maria is running the Book Club. You can find her on Slack – just sign up for our #bookclub channel or DM @maria spyropoulou. Alternatively, you can send an email to bookclub@womeninvoice.org. Cat pictures also welcome.
Currently reading
Myth of Artificial Intelligence
A tech entrepreneur and pioneering research scientist working at the forefront of natural language processing, Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to show how far we are from superintelligence, and what it would take to get there. Ever since Alan Turing, AI enthusiasts have equated artificial intelligence with human intelligence. This is a profound mistake. AI works on inductive reasoning, crunching data sets to predict outcomes. But humans don’t correlate data sets: we make conjectures informed by context and experience. Human intelligence is a web of best guesses, given what we know about the world. We haven’t a clue how to program this kind of intuitive reasoning, known as abduction. Yet it is the heart of common sense. That’s why Alexa can’t understand what you are asking, and why AI can only take us so far.
Larson argues that AI hype is both bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we want to make real progress, we will need to start by more fully appreciating the only true intelligence we know—our own.
Grab your copy and join their discussion!
What we have read in the past
