A People's Guide to AI

December 18, 2018 12:20 PM

Free PDF download A People’s Guide to AI is a comprehensive beginner's guide to understanding AI and other data-driven tech. The guide uses a popular education approach to explore and explain AI-based technologies so that everyone—from youth to seniors, and from non-techies to experts—has the chance to think critically about the kinds of futures automated technologies can bring. Free PDF and paid zine (!!) available.
posted by jlittlew (10 comments total)

i got really excited because i thought this was the PEOPLE'S GUIDE TO AL

but this seems cool too
posted by murphy slaw at 1:24 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is great! Based on some of the more negative comments in a recent thread, it seems that there's a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about what AI is, what it can do, and how humans can responsibly build and interact with AI. I like that this guide prompts people to have their own thought experiments and approach the field from a "science positive" perspective. Thanks for posting!
posted by k8bot at 2:11 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

My browser will not let me connect to the site linked. It returns the message:

Invalid certificate
Cannot verify the identity of the server “alliedmedia.org”
Certificate issued to search.dnsadvantage.com
Issued by: Rapid SSL SHA256 CA-G3
Valid from 9/15/2015 to 9/17/2017
. . .
Perhaps AI has already gotten a control of their server and my browser to keep me from downloading the document?
posted by tronec at 2:27 PM on December 18, 2018

Word count fun:algebra 1, statistics 1, policing:14
posted by Damienmce at 2:28 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Certificate issued to search.dnsadvantage.com

That's probably not good. It's unlikely to have anything to do with this pdf, I would guess.
posted by sfenders at 2:45 PM on December 18, 2018

Thanks.
posted by indianbadger1 at 3:31 PM on December 18, 2018

Thanks sfenders - my router was set to the highest security setting and it was blocking the site. I opted for the next lower notch and was able to go directly to the site.

The People's Guide looks very good!
posted by tronec at 4:29 PM on December 18, 2018

Looking forward to reading this. There's been some FUD about "AI" spread around, as well as some unrealistic expectations. Like most tech, I fear the technology less than its misuse by companies looking to profit from it.
posted by Artful Codger at 5:01 PM on December 18, 2018

Wow! This looks really fantastic and approachable. Downloaded, will probably point others to it when they have questions about (some of) what my day job entails.
posted by naju at 5:18 PM on December 18, 2018

This is very, very good. I have some pedantic complaints about some parts (neural networks aren't the only thing you can fit with online gradient descent, such that they keep improving as you show them more data), of course.

But when I saw they properly defined and explained the word "algorithm", I actually jumped out of my chair and did a fist punch.
posted by vogon_poet at 5:37 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]