How AI Thinks: How we built it, how it can help us, and how we can control it

Artificial intelligence has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, moving beyond simple information storage and logical games to perform intuitive thinking and human-like responses. Search engines are becoming answer engines, and AI is already transforming sectors including education, healthcare, and the creative arts. This book explores how AI understands sentiment and context, wins games with nearly infinite possible moves, and produces insights beyond human capacity—from instant code generation to protein structure analysis. Nigel Toon explains how AI systems are trained to train themselves, enabling them to generate original images and communicate in any language. The book argues that understanding how AI thinks will create significant opportunities and disruptions for society. Through examining AI's capabilities, Toon also reveals insights into how humans think, as we learn to coexist with machine intelligences of our own creation.