You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place

As heard on NPR's "Science Friday," discover the book recommended by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant: an "affectionately down-to-earth to the year's most hype-prone field of tech" (theverge.com).

 

"You look like a thing and I love you" is one of the best pickup lines ever . . . according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog AI Weirdness. She creates silly AIs that learn how to name paint colors, create the best recipes, and even flirt (badly) with humans—all to understand the technology that governs so much of our daily lives.

 

We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really... and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars?

 

Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't. Like, how can a computer design the perfect sandwich? What does robot-generated Harry Potter fan-fiction look like? And is the world's best Halloween costume really "Vampire Hog Bride"?

 

In this smart, often hilarious introduction to the most interesting science of our time, Shane shows how these programs learn, fail, and adapt—and how they reflect the best and worst of humanity.

 

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You is the perfect book for anyone curious about what the robots in our lives are thinking.

 


"I can't think of a better way to learn about artificial intelligence, and I've never had so much fun along the way." —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals

Janelle Shane has a PhD in electrical engineering and a master's in physics. At aiweirdness.com, she writes about artificial intelligence and the hilarious and sometimes unsettling ways that algorithms get human things wrong. She has been featured on the main TED stage, and in the New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED, PopularScience, All Things Considered, Science Friday, Marketplace, and more. She was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, and an Adweek Young Influential. She is almost certainly not a robot.