Free MIT Press Book on Deep Learning

 An MIT Press book   https://www.deeplearningbook.org/ 

Ian Goodfellow and Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville

Exercises   Lectures   External Links  

The Deep Learning textbook is a resource intended to help students and practitioners enter the field of machine learning in general and deep learning in particular. The online version of the book is now complete and will remain available online for free.

The deep learning textbook can now be ordered on Amazon.

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Citing the book

To cite this book, please use this bibtex entry:

@book{Goodfellow-et-al-2016,
    title={Deep Learning},
    author={Ian Goodfellow and Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville},
    publisher={MIT Press},
    note={\url{http://www.deeplearningbook.org}},
    year={2016}
}

To write your own document using our LaTeX style, math notation, or to copy our notation page, download our template files.

Errata in published editions

NVIDIA Text to Video

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30epFM6Vb0s

147,333 views  Apr 19, 2023  #chatgpt #AI #Robotics

NVIDIA's NEW AI 'Text To Video Takes the Industry By STORM! (NOW UNVEILED!)

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Welcome to our channel where we bring you the latest breakthroughs in AI. From deep learning to robotics, we cover it all. Our videos offer valuable insights and perspectives that will expand your knowledge and understanding of this rapidly evolving field. Be sure to subscribe and stay updated on our latest videos.

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#AI

Book: In the Age of AI, 'What Does it Mean to be Smart?'

 Here an intro to McKinsey's 'Author Talks', which interviews Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic on his new book on AI and Automation.   Plan to Read it. 

Author Talks: In the ‘age of AI,’ what does it mean to be smart?

March 16, 2023 | Interview

As artificial intelligence gets better at predicting human behavior, a business psychologist encourages people to strengthen the uniquely human skills that machine learning has yet to tap.

In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic about his new book, I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique (Harvard Business Review Press, February 2023). Chamorro-Premuzic explains why some AI algorithms model humanity as a simple species, how attention has become commoditized, and why the right questions are now more valuable than the right answers. An edited version of the conversation follows.

Why did you write this, your 12th book, now?

I’m a professor of business psychology at Columbia University and UCL [University College London] and the chief innovation officer at ManpowerGroup. I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique is a book about the behavioral consequences or impact of artificial intelligence, including the dark side of human behavior and what we should do to upgrade ourselves as a species.

The book is written at a time that, in my view, could only be described as the AI age. Humans have always relied on technological inventiveness and innovation to shape their cultural and social evolution, and I think there can be very little doubt that the definitive technology of today is artificial intelligence, or AI.

Now, even the wider public is talking about things like ChatGPT and other conversational interfaces, and the tech giants are described mostly as data companies and as algorithmic prediction businesses.

The book was very much written in the midst of the AI age, or under the influence of AI, because I wrote the bulk of this at the height of the pandemic when we had very little physical interaction or contact with other people outside of our nuclear families. This means I was heavily influenced by hyperconnectedness and the datafication of me. Everything I did was being datafied and subjected to the predictive powers of AI during 2020 and 2021.

I can’t say that there won’t be a better era to read the book, but it certainly wouldn’t have had the same connotation and impact if we had published it five or ten years ago.

Haven’t humans always blamed technology for every problem they face?

There is a common tendency for people to overreact to things that are novel, whether in a good way or in a bad way, and technologies are a very good example of this.

Perhaps the best example is how, when the written newspaper first scaled up and productized, people feared that humans would never meet in person ever again because there would be no information or even gossip to exchange if all the news was in written form. Also, from the 1950s onward, people showed concern that television would lead to less intellectual activities, but I don’t think they were wrong because reading habits went down since mass TV was introduced.

What I tried to do with this book is not be at one extreme or the other. What’s important to me is to not miss the opportunity to highlight the behavioral impact and consequences that we have already seen artificial intelligence have on us. This is not a book about AI, but about humans in the AI age.  .. .. ' 

A Hackers Mind Pubished

 Just about to read, good direction, about to read     by Bruce Schneier

A Hacker’s Mind         Is Now Published  by Bruce Schneier     

Tuesday was the official publication date of A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules   , and How to Bend them Back.   It broke into the 2000s on the Amazon best-seller list.  ...' 

Reviews in the New York Times  , Cory Doctorow’s blog  , Science , and the Associated Press  ... ' 

 (in Amazon)  ... Legendary cybersecurity expert and New York Times best-selling author Bruce Schneier reveals how using a hacker’s mindset can change how you think about your life and the world.

A hack is any means of subverting a system’s rules in unintended ways. The tax code isn’t computer code, but a series of complex formulas. It has vulnerabilities; we call them “loopholes.” We call exploits “tax avoidance strategies.” And there is an entire industry of “black hat” hackers intent on finding exploitable loopholes in the tax code. We call them accountants and tax attorneys.

In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Once you learn how to notice hacks, you’ll start seeing them everywhere―and you’ll never look at the world the same way again. Almost all systems have loopholes, and this is by design. Because if you can take advantage of them, the rules no longer apply to you.

Unchecked, these hacks threaten to upend our financial markets, weaken our democracy, and even affect the way we think. And when artificial intelligence starts thinking like a hacker―at inhuman speed and scale―the results could be catastrophic.

But for those who would don the “white hat,” we can understand the hacking mindset and rebuild our economic, political, and legal systems to counter those who would exploit our society. And we can harness artificial intelligence to improve existing systems, predict and defend against hacks, and realize a more equitable world ... 

You Are Not Expected to Understand This

The value and emergence of Code: 

"You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World Audible Logo Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Torie Bosch - editor (Author), Ellen Ullman - introduction (Author), & 3 more

In this audiobook, Mack Sanderson and Emily Schwing reveal the stories behind the computer coding that touches all aspects of life—for better or worse

Few of us give much thought to computer code or how it comes to be. The very word “code” makes it sound immutable or even inevitable. “You Are Not Expected to Understand This” demonstrates that, far from being preordained, computer code is the result of very human decisions, ones we all live with when we use social media, take photos, drive our cars, and engage in a host of other activities.

Everything from law enforcement to space exploration relies on code written by people who, at the time, made choices and assumptions that would have long-lasting, profound implications for society. Torie Bosch brings together many of today’s leading technology experts to provide new perspectives on the code that shapes our lives. Contributors discuss a host of topics, such as how university databases were programmed long ago to accept only two genders, what the person who programmed the very first pop-up ad was thinking at the time, the first computer worm, the Bitcoin white paper, and perhaps the most famous seven words in Unix history: “You are not expected to understand this.”

This compelling book tells the human stories behind programming, enabling those of us who don’t think much about code to recognize its importance, and those who work with it every day to better understand the long-term effects of the decisions they make.

With an introduction by Ellen Ullman and contributions by Mahsa Alimardani, Elena Botella, Meredith Broussard, David Cassel, Arthur Daemmrich, Charles Duan, Quinn DuPont, Claire L. Evans, Hany Farid, James Grimmelmann, Katie Hafner, Susan C. Herring, Syeda Gulshan Ferdous Jana, Lowen Liu, John MacCormick, Brian McCullough, Charlton McIlwain, Lily Hay Newman, Margaret O’Mara, Will Oremus, Nick Partridge, Benjamin Pope, Joy Lisi Rankin, Afsaneh Rigot, Ellen R. Stofan, Lee Vinsel, Josephine Wolff, and Ethan Zuckerman.  ... '  

New Book on Synthetic Data

The data is most often,  the thing.    Look forward to taking a look.

New Book: Synthetic Data

Published on November 28, 2022, By Vincent Granville

Author of Intuitive Machine Learning and Explainable AI.

84 articles

Synthetic data is used more and more to augment real-life datasets, enriching them and allowing black-box systems to correctly classify observations or predict values that are well outside of training and validation sets. In addition, it helps understand decisions made by obscure systems such as deep neural networks, contributing to the development of explainable AI. It also helps with unbalanced data, for instance in fraud detection. Finally, since synthetic data is not directly linked to real people or transactions, it offers protection against data leakage. Synthetic data also contributes to eliminating algorithm biases and privacy issues, and more generally, to increased security.

Terrain generation, evolution and morphing (in chapter 11)

This book is the culmination of years of research on the topic, by the author. Not only it integrates all the material from his previous book “Intuitive Machine Learning and explainable AI”, but it also contains all but the most advanced math from his book on stochastic simulations. The author also added more recent advances with applications to terrain generation (with animated data), synthetic universes and experimental math. The latter is an infinite source of synthetic data to build and benchmark new machine learning techniques. Conversely mathematics benefits from these techniques to uncover new insights related to the most famous unsolved math problems. Chapter 14 on the Riemann Hypothesis illustrates this point, with new state-of-the-art research results on the subject.  ... ' 

A Hackers Mind: First Review

Plan to read this, the topic is very important for anyone in the field.  I continue to follow. 

First Review of A Hacker’s Mind

Kirkus reviews   A Hacker’s Mind:

A cybersecurity expert examines how the powerful game whatever system is put before them, leaving it to others to cover the cost.

Schneier, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and author of such books as Data and Goliath and Click Here To Kill Everybody, regularly challenges his students to write down the first 100 digits of pi, a nearly impossible task­—but not if they cheat, concerning which he admonishes, “Don’t get caught.” Not getting caught is the aim of the hackers who exploit the vulnerabilities of systems of all kinds. Consider right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who located a hack in the tax code: “Because he was one of the founders of PayPal, he was able to use a $2,000 investment to buy 1.7 million shares of the company at $0.001 per share, turning it into $5 billion—all forever tax free.” It was perfectly legal—and even if it weren’t, the wealthy usually go unpunished. The author, a fluid writer and tech communicator, reveals how the tax code lends itself to hacking, as when tech companies like Apple and Google avoid paying billions of dollars by transferring profits out of the U.S. to corporate-friendly nations such as Ireland, then offshoring the “disappeared” dollars to Bermuda, the Caymans, and other havens. Every system contains trap doors that can be breached to advantage. For example, Schneier cites “the Pudding Guy,” who hacked an airline miles program by buying low-cost pudding cups in a promotion that, for $3,150, netted him 1.2 million miles and “lifetime Gold frequent flier status.” Since it was all within the letter if not the spirit of the offer, “the company paid up.” The companies often do, because they’re gaming systems themselves. “Any rule can be hacked,” notes the author, be it a religious dietary restriction or a legislative procedure. With technology, “we can hack more, faster, better,” requiring diligent monitoring and a demand that everyone play by rules that have been hardened against tampering.

An eye-opening, maddening book that offers hope for leveling a badly tilted playing field.

I got a starred review. Libraries make decisions on what to buy based on starred reviews. Publications make decisions about what to review based on starred reviews. This is a big deal.

Book’s webpage    https://www.schneier.com/books/a-hackers-mind/ 

[Book Review] A Behavioral Science Road Map for Marketers

Was asked to comment on this,   here is a review,   taking a look. 

[Book Review] A Behavioral Science Road Map for Marketers  in Customerthink

David Dodd -October 17, 2022

Data science and behavioral science have emerged as the twin pillars of marketing success in the twenty-first century. They have become, in essence, the yin and yang of consistent, high-performance marketing.

These disciplines are both essential because together they enable marketers to develop a more complete understanding of their customers and potential buyers. Data science (which includes the technologies that enable the collection and processing of data) can give marketers a rich picture of buyer behaviors. Behavioral science (primarily in the form of behavioral economics) provides a set of principles that enable marketers to better understand how people process information and make decisions. 

Data science has received a huge amount of attention in marketing circles over the past several years. For example, the use of artificial intelligence in marketing has recently been one of the hottest topics in the industry. The use of behavioral science in marketing has received somewhat less attention even though it has a longer history of use by marketers.

The reality is, marketers have been using principles of behavioral economics for years, albeit largely unwittingly. A 2010 article in McKinsey Quarterly put it this way:  "Long before behavioral economics had a name, marketers were using it. 'Three for the price of two' offers and extended-payment layaway plans became widespread because they worked - not because marketers had run scientific studies . . ."

A new book by Nancy Harhut - Using Behavioral Science in Marketing:  Drive Customer Action and Loyalty by Prompting Instinctive Responses (Kogan Page, 2022) - is a timely and much needed resource for marketers who want to leverage the power of human psychology in their marketing efforts.

Nancy Harhut is a seasoned marketing professional who has extensive experience with using behavioral science in marketing. In 2017, she cofounded HBT Marketing, a consultancy that specializes in applying principles of behavioral science to marketing. Prior to HBT, Nancy held senior creative management positions at several agencies, including Hill Holiday, Mullen and Digitas.

What's In the Book

Nancy Harhut refers to Using Behavioral Science in Marketing as a "hands-on handbook," and that is an apt description of her book. She clearly wrote Using Behavioral Science in Marketing primarily for hands-on marketing practitioners.

While Ms. Harhut provides clear and concise descriptions of the behavioral science principles covered in the book and includes ample citations to the research relating to those principles, her primary focus is on how marketers can apply those principles. She wrote, "In fact, you'll find I go short on the scientific research and longer on the way to use it." ... ' 

Buying the Cameras

Implications of the fears of needed data gathering for General AI, Placed in the context of human behavior

What Keith Lowell Jensen sums up  is what George Orwell failed to predict is that:

"We'd buy the cameras ourselves and our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching"

   quoted from "Stories, Dice and Rocks that Think: How Humans learned to see the Future and Shape it" By Byron Reese p. 270.  An excellent Book that made me think as a practitioner in the space.

New Book: Solving Almost any Machine Learning Problem

What seems to be an interesting and inexpensive book, initially on Github, but then in a paper book version brought to my attention by Vincent Granville.   "Approaching (Any) Machine Learning problem"  by Abishek Thakur.   Paper version very inexpensive and includes some useful infrastructure view and order here:  https://mltblog.com/3wkdjSo    He is funding himself with this, so strongly consider buying a copy.

Book on AI and Human Future

Completed now ...

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future Hardcover – November 2, 2021

by Henry A Kissinger (Author, Former US Scty of State), Eric Schmidt  (Author from Google), Daniel Huttenlocher (Author from MIT Dean)

Three of the world’s most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society—and what this technology means for us all.

An AI learned to win chess by making moves human grand masters had never conceived. Another AI discovered a new antibiotic by analyzing molecular properties human scientists did not understand. Now, AI-powered jets are defeating experienced human pilots in simulated dogfights. AI is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education, and many other fields and, in so doing, transforming how humans are experiencing reality.

In The Age of AI, three leading thinkers have come together to consider how AI will change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and the societies in which we live. The Age of AI is an essential roadmap to our present and our future, an era unlike any that has come before.

It also started up an 'automated' book review by the NYTimes:

Book: Full Spectrum Thinking

Good thoughts by current and longtime colleague.    

CURRENT BOOK: Full-Spectrum Thinking: How to Escape Boxes in a Post-Categorical Future

Full-Spectrum Thinking:  How to Escape Boxes in a Post-Categorical Future    By Bob Johansen

Download Sample Chapter

Leading futurist Bob Johansen shows how a new way of thinking, enhanced by new technologies, will help leaders break free of limiting labels and see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world.

The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we're restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. Categories lead us toward certainty but away from clarity, and categorical thinking moves us away from understanding the bigger picture. Sticking with this old way of thinking and seeing isn't just foolish, it's dangerous.  .... '

Teaching in Person and Online

 Been reading the book below, so far looks very good and to the point in these times.  Have not finished, but good so far.  The technical specifics may get out of date, but the rest should hold up. 

The Hybrid Teacher, Using Technology to teach in Person and OnLine,  by Emma Pass

A practical educational technology resource for educators teaching remotely or in the classroom

The most effective hybrid teachers are those that have a vast knowledge of instructional strategies, technologies, tools, and resources, and can masterfully build meaningful relationships with students in person and through a screen. The Hybrid Teacher: Using Technology to Teach in Person and Online will teach educators to leverage the technology they have access to both in their traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms and in remote learning environments, including established online and hybrid schools; emergency response models for pandemics, natural disasters; rural education; and connecting with students who can't make it to school.    ( Do note that Emma is a middle school teacher, so some of her examples are from that realm,  but still I think useful.)

Many of us had to adapt to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we still need resources for optimizing our instruction and becoming the best teachers we can be. This book is a practical guide for teachers who want to prepare for current and future remote instruction or leverage the best practices of remote instruction and EdTech tools to bring back to their brick-and-mortar classrooms. You'll learn about the impact of social and economic differences on classroom technology, and you'll find strategies and advice for maximizing success in each situation.  From Amazon

An Age of AI-ism?

Looks to be a very interesting book, plan to read it.   Authors are interesting, notably I was at a meeting with Kissinger long ago in DC.   Never thought of him as a technical futurist.

The age of AI-ism

By Contributor Rich Heimann in BDTech Talks.    Whose book, Doing AI,  'explores what AI is, is not, what others want AI to become, what you need solutions to be, and how to approach problem-solving'.

 I recently read 'The Age of AI: And Our Human Future by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher' The book describes itself as “an essential roadmap to our present and our future.” We certainly need more business-, government-, and philosophical-centric books on artificial intelligence rather than hype and fantasy. Despite high hopes, in terms of its promise as a roadmap, the book is wanting.

Some of the reviews on Amazon focused on the lack of examples of artificial intelligence and the fact that the few provided, like Halicin and AlphaZero, are banal and repeatedly filled up the pages. These reviews are correct in a narrow sense. However, the book is meant to be conceptual, so few examples are understandable. Considering that there are no actual examples of artificial intelligence, finding any is always an accomplishment.

Frivolity aside, the book is troubling because it promotes some doubtful philosophical explanations that I would like to discuss further. I know what you must be thinking. However, this review is necessary because the authors attempt to convince readers that AI puts human identity at risk.

The authors ask, “if AI thinks, or approximates thinking, who are we?” (p. 20). While this statement may satiate a spiritual need by the authors and provide them a purpose to save us, it is unfair under the vague auspices of “AI” to even talk about such an existential risk.

We could leave it at that, but the authors represent important spheres of society (e.g., Silicon Valley, government, and academia); therefore, the claim demands further inspection. As we see governments worldwide dedicating more resources and authorizing more power to newly created organizations and positions, we must ask ourselves if these spheres, organizations, and leaders reflect our shared goals and values. This is a consequential inquiry, and to prove it, the authors determine the same pursuit. They declare that societies across the globe need to reconcile technology with their values, structures, and social contracts (p. 21) and add that “while the number of individuals capable of creating AI is growing, the ranks of those contemplating this technology’s implications for humanity—social, legal, philosophical, spiritual, moral—remain dangerously thin.” (p. 26)  .... 

To answer the most basic question, “if AI thinks,…who are we?” the book begins by explaining where we are (Chapter One: Where We Are). But, “where we are” is a suspicious jumping-off point because it is not where “we” are, and it indeed fails to tell us where AI is. It also fails to tell us where AI was as “where we are” is inherently ahistorical. AI did not start, nor end, in 2017 with the victory of AlphaZero over Stockfish in a chess match. Moreover, AlphaZero beating Stockfish is not evidence, let alone proof, that machines think. Such an arbitrary story creates the illusion of inevitability or conclusiveness in a field historically with neither.   .... ' 

Grand Transitions

Makes you think.

A Theory of (Almost) Everything

A new book / Podcast  analyzes the seven grand transitions that have formed the modern world  By Steven Cherry

We’ve been speaking with Václav Smil, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Member of the Order of Canada, scholar extraordinaire, and author of a new must-read book:

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made.

 Steven Cherry Hi this is Steven Cherry for Radio Spectrum.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the world is not only changing quickly, it’s changing at a faster rate than ever. Or does it just seem that way?

Surely we can all agree that the Industrial Revolution has changed everything. Or has it? One noted economist says there in fact were three industrial revolutions, and only one of them—the second one, from about 1870 to 1914, was important. In fact he largely discounts what we call the information revolution as insubstantial.

If you wanted to study the great trends and transitions of civilization—not just Western Civilization, but all of it—and break it down into epochs, and choose from the various transitions the five or seven most significant ones, and study the interplays of these transitions—which are causes of the others, and to what degree, and why some occur quickly and others—like the electric car—are postponed for a hundred years; if you wanted to do all that, it would take a lifetime of study.

In fact, you’d have to write ten or thirty books each one of which looks at some aspect of our world from a height of 30,000 feet, and then write an eleventh or thirty-first book that was the encapsulation of all that wisdom.

That certainly seems impossible. The last true Renaissance person, someone who knew pretty much all that was known at the time, might have been Aristotle, with asterisks for Franklin and Diderot, and maybe Bertrand Russell.  ... ' 

Book: Mastering Blockchain

Just brought to my attention.     Inform me if you would like a review related mention.

New O'Reilly Book:

Mastering Blockchain:  Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies, Smart Contracts, and Decentralized Applications 1st Edition

by Lorne Lantz  (Author), Daniel Cawrey  (Author)  ...  

The future will be increasingly distributed. As the publicity surrounding Bitcoin and blockchain has shown, distributed technology and business models are gaining popularity. Yet the disruptive potential of this technology is often obscured by hype and misconception. This detailed guide distills the complex, fast moving ideas behind blockchain into an easily digestible reference manual, showing what's really going on under the hood. .... " 

Leadership by Algorithm

An interview with David De Cremer

From Knowledge@Wharton

Artificial Intelligence Will Change How We Think About Leadership

Supports K@W's, Technology Content

The increasing attention being paid to artificial intelligence raises important questions about its integration with social sciences and humanity, according to David De Cremer, founder and director of the Centre on AI Technology for Humankind at the National University of Singapore Business School. He is the author of the recent book, Leadership by Algorithm: Who Leads and Who Follows in the AI Era?

While AI today is good at repetitive tasks and can replace many managerial functions, it could over time acquire the “general intelligence” that humans have, he said in a recent interview with AI for Business (AIB), a new initiative at Analytics at Wharton. Headed by Wharton operations, information and decisions professor Kartik Hosanagar, AIB is a research initiative that focuses on helping students expand their knowledge and application of machine learning and understand the business and societal implications of AI. 

According to De Cremer, AI will never have “a soul” and it cannot replace human leadership qualities that let people be creative and have different perspectives. Leadership is required to guide the development and applications of AI in ways that best serve the needs of humans. “The job of the future may well be [that of] a philosopher who understands technology, what it means to our human identity, and what it means for the kind of society we would like to see,” he noted.

AI for Business: A lot is being written about artificial intelligence. What inspired you to write Leadership by Algorithm? What gap among existing books about AI were you trying to fill?   .... 

An edited transcript of the interview appears below:

Leveraging NVidia GPUs to Power Analytics and AI

Below is an Ad from Nvidia,  Book worth looking at.   I like the fact that they say 'AI and Analytics', a rare clarification.  Its not all AI

  .... Free BOOK

ACCELERATING APACHE SPARK 3

Leveraging NVIDA GPUs to Power the Next Era of Analytics and AI

Apache Spark is a powerful execution engine for large-scale parallel data processing across a cluster of machines, which enables rapid application development and high performance.

In this ebook, learn how Spark 3 innovations make it possible to use the massively parallel architecture of GPUs to further accelerate Spark data processing.

Fill out the form below to download the ebook and learn about the following: The data processing evolution, from Hadoop to GPUs and the NVIDIA RAPIDS™ library

Spark, what it is, what it does, and why it matters

GPU-acceleration in Spark

DataFrames and Spark SQL

A Spark regression example with a random forest classifier

An example of an end-to-end machine learning workflow GPU-accelerated with XGBoost  ... "

Free Fundamentals of Machine Learning Book

Free 185 page PDF:  Comprehensive Guide to  Machine learning   Technical, but parts are useful generally.

Free Book: A Comprehensive Guide to Machine Learning     (Berkeley University)  via Capri Granville in DSC

By Soroush Nasiriany, Garrett Thomas, William Wang, Alex Yang. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. Dated June 24, 2019. This is not the same book as The Math of Machine Learning, also published by the same department at Berkeley, in 2018, and also authored by Garret Thomas....  

A Theory of Computing

Looks to be of interest, both technical and philosophical.  Undergrad view at least, but could inspire people to think about where all this emerging tech and hype is going once again.  The word 'Theory' scares many people,  but can be a useful way to think of things.  And why computing is now so  important to business and economics.   Relating back to the notion of 'virtual agents', its  a means of installing elements of assistance everywhere, for everyone.    So we should think about its likely future.

Exploring the Theory of Computing    By Allyn Jackson in CACM

Avi Wigderson.  (Interview) 

In his new book, Avi Wigderson discusses, among other things, how fundamental computational processes are to all fields of science.

Credit: Simons Foundation

For close to half a century, the problem of P versus NP has resisted resolution. It also has inspired a tremendous flowering of the field of theoretical computer science and led to an explosion of interconnections to other branches of science and engineering.

Avi Wigderson's new 440-page book, Mathematics and Computation: A Theory Revolutionizing Technology and Science (Princeton University Press, October 2019), lays out a commanding overview of the theory of computing and argues for its central role in human thought.

Wigderson is the Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, where he has been leading computer science and discrete math activities for the past 20 years. Among his honors is the 2019 Donald E. Knuth Prize, conferred by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) and the IEEE Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science,

CACM recently spoke with Wigderson about his book. What follows is an edited and condensed version of the conversation.

This is a very unusual book. It's part exposition of the development of a technical area, part account of the state of an art, part philosophical exploration. It seems to me it's also part love letter; there is a lot of passion in the book. How did it come about?

It came out of a failure to write a different book. When I started eight or more years ago, I was planning to write a popular book. I wrote several chapters but found it very hard to decide on the level. Eventually Edna, my wife, suggested that I write a book that I can finish!

This is the book that I knew how to write. It's aimed at a somewhat more sophisticated audience, not very sophisticated; undergrads can read it.  Quite a few chapters can be read by almost anyone with a little background and, of course, motivation. I hope the clarity is attractive enough for people who start reading to be caught and to continue.  .... "