The first half of this list is themed on AI (essays, books and novels). The second half is a list of general suggestions for Fourth Form.
Everyone's talking about it, but it's a black box system... What's inside it? How does it work? Is is sexist? Is it racist? Does it tell the truth? Here are a few fiction and non-fiction titles to get us thinking about the brave new world in which we are living.
Do consider using your local authority library card. Many of these books will be available to borrow. Using the Libby app and your library credentials, you will be able to stream audiobooks for free too.
Providing overwhelming amounts of information without adequate structure or documentation is not transparency–Richard Berk
According to Christian's website, The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture―and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.
This is a readable book (and there's a copy in the English Department library in F5, if you wish to read it.
Klara is an AF – an Artificial Friend – androids bought by parents to provide companionship for their teenage children, who, for reasons that become clearer over the course of the book, are home-schooled by “screen professors” in the novel’s polluted and anxious future America. Klara is chosen by Josie, a fragile young woman who we soon learn has an illness that may kill her as it killed her sister.
The relationships between the story’s artificially intelligent characters and its human ones prompt readers to think afresh about family, mortality, and the meaning of life. The scenarios and dilemmas in this story are fictional—but within our lifetimes they may become all too real. There's a copy in the English Department library in F5.
The act of giving a reason is the antithesis of authority. When the voice of authority fails, the voice of reason emerges. Or vice versa–Frederick Schauer
This short story was published in 1909. Everyone lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the Machine. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge. What happens when the Machine stops? There's a copy you can borrow in the English Department library in F5.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing was ever made–Immanuel Kant
In this myth-busting guide to AI past and present, one of the world's leading researchers shows why our fears for the future are misplaced.
The ultimate dream of AI is to build machines that are like us: conscious and self-aware. While this remains a remote possibility, rapid progress in AI is already transforming our world. Yet the public debate is still largely centred on unlikely prospects, from sentient machines to dystopian robot takeovers.
In this lively and clear-headed guide, Michael Wooldridge challenges the prevailing narrative, revealing how the hype distracts us from both the more immediate risks that this technology poses - from algorithmic bias to fake news - and the true life-changing potential of the field. The Road to Conscious Machines elucidates the discoveries of AI's greatest pioneers from Alan Turing to Demis Hassabis, and what today's researchers actually think and do. There's a copy you can borrow in the English Department library in F5.
Jeanette Winterson is best known as a novelist, but has always written about technology. 12 Bytes is a collection of essays exploring our relationship with technology. She places it within the context of art and culture. There's a copy you can borrow in the English Department library in F5.
When Mae is hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful internet company, she feels she's been given the opportunity of a lifetime.
Run out of a sprawling California campus, the Circle links users' personal emails, social media, and finances with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of transparency.
Mae can't believe her great fortune to work for them - even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public... There's a copy you can borrow in The Undercroft library.
A prescient, important and enjoyable book, and what I love most about The Circle is that it is telling us so much about the impact of the computer age on human beings in the only form that can do so with the requisite wit, interiority and profundity: the novel–Edward Docx in the Guardian
Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London–where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence–Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart--and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human–our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control.
The Gutenberg Elegies – Sven Birkets
In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. In The Gutenberg Elegies, he explores the impact of technology on the experience of reading. Drawing on his own passionate, lifelong love of books, Birkerts examines how literature intimately shapes and nourishes the inner life. What does it mean to "hear" a book on audiotape or decipher its words in electronic form on a laptop screen? Can the world created by Henry James exist in an era defined by the work of Bill Gates? Are books as we know them–volumes printed in ink on paper, with pages to be turned as the reading of each page is completed–dead?
At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a bold challenge to the information technologies of today and tomorrow, The Gutenberg Elegies is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and the future of books.
... and here are some extra suggestions for Fourth Form.
Bullied for her light skin tone and missing her absent mother, life isn’t always sunny for 12-year-old Ella, growing up in segregated Alcolu in 1944. So, she’s ecstatic when her mother – pursuing her jazz singer dreams in Boston – invites her for Christmas. But whilst there, Ella discovers the secrets of her mother and the father she never knew – and her most unexpected family history. And upon her return to the South a month later, life changes even more with the news that her classmate has been arrested for the murder of two local white girls. Nothing will ever be the same…
This is the first instalment of an epic fantasy series which finds an ordinary boy and a flying girl enmeshed in an adventure with a host of magical creatures.
A poignant and moving LGBTQ+ graphic novel, Different for Boys explores sexuality and masculinity with a touch of humour, by twice Carnegie Medal-winner and bestselling author Patrick Ness. Ant Stevenson has many questions, like when did he stop being a virgin? Are there degrees of virginity? And is it different for boys? Especially for boys who like boys? Ant tries to figure out the answers to his questions as he balances his relationships with three very different boys: Charlie, who is both virulently homophobic and yet close friends with Ant; Jack, whose camp behaviour makes him the target of Charlie's rage; and finally Freddie, who just wants Ant to try out for the rugby team. From the bestselling author of the Chaos Walking trilogy comes a timely and important story about inclusivity, prejudice and friendship.
This novel, inspired by our worries about the COVID-19 pandemic, follows the seventeen-year-old Aisha, who hasn't seen her sister, June, for two years. And now that a calamity is about to end the world in nine months' time, she and her mother decide that it's time to track her down and mend the hurts of the past. Along with Aisha's boyfriend, Walter and his parents (and Fleabag the stray cat), the group take a road trip through Malaysia in a wildly decorated campervan - to put the past to rest, to come to terms with the present, and to hope for the future.
For any kid who ever wanted a hamster: careful what you wish for! Olly Brown is hamster obsessed, but he never gets to take home the Year 6 class hamster. His dad won't allow any pets. But then the most amazing thing happens: a hamster shows up in Olly's house anyway! And it seems smart. Like, really smart.
This new hamster, Tibbles, is in awe of Olly, and it turns out Tibbles is one of many: there's a whole civilization of super-advanced, intelligent hamsters who seem to be worshipping Olly ... as a god?
THIS IS SO AWESOME! But how is this possible???
Prepare to enter the most dramatic conflict the world has ever seen, as historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us on a spine-tingling, heart-stopping adventure. We witness the Second World War first-hand through the eyes of ordinary people living in extraordinary times, from the women who worked all night in factories to the chess players who cracked unbreakable codes. Because in total war, no life is left untouched...
The Adventures in Time series brings the past alive for twenty-first century children. These stories are every bit as exciting as those of Harry Potter or Matilda Wormwood. The only difference is they actually happened...
Would she ever find a real-life husband? Would she even find a partner to dance with at tonight’s ball? She just didn’t know. Anna Austen has always been told she must marry rich. Her future depends upon it. While her dear cousin Fanny has a little more choice, she too is under pressure to find a suitor. But how can either girl know what she wants? Is finding love even an option? The only person who seems to have answers is their Aunt Jane. She has never married. In fact, she’s perfectly happy, so surely being single can’t be such a bad thing? The time will come for each of the Austen girls to become the heroines of their own stories. Will they follow in Jane’s footsteps? In this witty, sparkling novel of choices, Lucy Worsley brings alive the delightful life of Jane Austen as you’ve never seen it before.