How AI Works: From Sorcery to Science Paperback – 24 Oct. 2023

I'm a software developer but haven't really ever looked into machine learning and AI. Any time I heard people talk about it (I have lots of machine learning colleagues) my eyes would glaze over and I'd drop from the call.I wanted to get at least a basic understanding though, since my work is getting more and more entwined with ML peoples' stuff. So I read this book. It's a very clear and concise history of how we got to where we are today - the types of models, how they work, how they evolved.The explanations are exactly what I'm looking for - no math (or only very basic), not getting too deep into the weeds, more of a description of how the model works rather than any math equations. If you consider yourself an ML engineer or data scientist, then you'd probably want something more detailed. For the "lay person" like me, it's perfect.

It's pretty good for a beginner to learn the basics. I'm not keen on the super wordy explanations though - why not just put a few simple maths equations in? Also it's a bit out of date now (as of Aug 2025)