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Uncertainty, Epidemics & AI: A Reading List
Where to go next on probability, modeling, pandemics, and thinking clearly about artificial intelligence.
- Type
- Reading list
- Difficulty
- All levels
- Length
- 6 min read
These books pick up the threads of the conversation: how to reason under uncertainty, how epidemics and complex systems behave, and how to think clearly about what AI can and cannot do. They range from gentle to demanding, so start wherever you are.
START HERE
Approachable books that build intuition for uncertainty and risk.
The Signal and the Noise
BEGINNERNate Silver
A readable tour of why some predictions succeed and many fail, and how to tell forecasting from fortune-telling. A perfect on-ramp to the whole episode.
How to Expect the Unexpected
BEGINNERKit Yates
A clear guide to why humans are bad at prediction, exponential growth, and probability, from a mathematician who also writes on epidemics.
The Model Thinker
INTERMEDIATEScott E. Page
An accessible case for using many models rather than one, with the SIR epidemic model among the examples. Directly in the spirit of this episode.
EPIDEMICS AND COMPLEX SYSTEMS
How diseases and interconnected systems actually spread.
The Rules of Contagion
BEGINNERAdam Kucharski
An epidemiologist explains how outbreaks, and ideas, spread, including R0 and why models are so useful and so easily misread.
Networks: A Very Short Introduction
INTERMEDIATEGuido Caldarelli & Michele Catanzaro
A compact look at how the structure of connections, like a dense city, shapes how things move through a population.
THINKING CLEARLY ABOUT AI
For separating durable progress from hype.
The Worlds I See
BEGINNERFei-Fei Li
A leading AI scientist's memoir of how modern AI actually developed. Grounding for what the technology is and is not.
AI Snake Oil
INTERMEDIATEArvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor
A careful, evidence-first guide to telling real AI capabilities apart from marketing. The book-length version of this episode's scepticism.
Prediction Machines
INTERMEDIATEAjay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb
Frames modern AI as a drop in the cost of prediction, a useful economic lens on what it changes and what it does not.
GO DEEPER
More demanding reads on probability, chance, and flow.
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
INTERMEDIATEPeter L. Bernstein
The history of how humanity learned to measure and reason about risk. Rich background for what applied probability is really about.
Fooled by Randomness
ADVANCEDNassim Nicholas Taleb
A provocative argument about how much of what we credit to skill is really chance. A bracing counterweight to false precision.