Books worth reading to understand A.I. better, or to improve productivity, the quality of the results, or simply put your mind into a state of extensive mental effort just so that you can understand one paragraph, aren’t many, considering that a real work of art, when it comes to writing, should not exceed a hundred pages, at the largest extent.
I am not a big reader. I am a big thinker. I like to dive into a subject before ever reading much about it, as it gives me the freedom to observe how my thoughts come into being, before being altered by someone else’s understanding of the world. It is also a good exercise to develop multiple ways of thinking, as reading first, before engaging with a problem, might create the comfort that knowing is enough. Understanding is different, and only comes after prolonged effort, but the benefits are lifelong.
My selection of books in this age of artificial intelligence comes after realizing that knowledge is no longer a core necessity, as we can set agents to find and apply it any way we can think of. Thinking, though, does not come from knowledge - it comes straight from the way we have developed our minds. For example, I never thought I could think in words; for me, my life journey through university came with little concern about how I speak, and therefore how I think about speech. Suddenly, I acknowledged that other people, who were much better at any kind of linguistic practice, think about their words before tensing a muscle, and, to my surprise, I realized that I was doing it too, but never as a deliberate act, never with awareness, never consciously and willingly controlling it as it happens.
The next day, I did it - my first ever conscious word thinking. It took the whole day just to understand how my mind works, how it takes the words heard before and uses them to express the vivid imagination I so overused my whole life, to that moment. It was still impossible to manifest in words correctly, and only after hundreds of pages, maybe a thousand, did I fully master the ability to describe, in precise words, rarely humble opinions or intriguing insights. Just writing does not cover enough for a human to master linguistics, as trying to convince another one, in a dialogue, requires an entirely different way of thinking about words, and further on, creating various writing pieces requires even more. And this is the theme of this book selection.
1. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Ludwig Wittgenstein
2. Yoga Sutras - Patanjali
3. The computer and the brain - John von Neumann
Less than three hundred pages, together. More than a year for most people to understand the complexity of each. But no worries: if there is one aspect of our lives that will increase in the next period, it is the time we have to develop ourselves while working with digital agents.
It is widely known in companies that people have to integrate artificial intelligence into their workflow. Indeed, A.I. will improve the quality and the quantity of work, but if people choose to improve their intelligence and understanding of computers, that increase coming from the output of digital agents will be exponential. Think of it as if you were able to describe any digital work perfectly to Claude - it can do anything in the digital world, from creating a fully operational website to architecture models that can receive a stamp for construction. We only need to learn and understand what we want to create, and it will be done in no time. Therefore, the problem is not giving Fable 5.1 a thousand euros in tokens to build the best 3d modeling software, but giving one euro to an Opus 5.5 to build a 3D model of that, which a good architect would work days on. If the architect can envision the design, which comes from his understanding of architecture, the agents can build it completely, therefore leaving that time for the architect to learn and understand more about architecture, or perhaps, even better, a new domain, like universally helpful physics principles.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
This philosopher wrote a book that regards the affairs of humans with language. In its pages you will find the most well-organized piece of writing ever composed. In your mind, you will find chaos that waits to become organized. You will discover how every sentence makes sense alone, and in the totality of the work. You may find it difficult to understand the connections between them, and surely, few of you can go through the whole book without stopping to think, “What the hell does he mean here!”
What are the benefits?… If you manage to pass the first chapter, while making the effort to understand everything the author had in mind, you will learn more about linguistics and how the world of words affects our minds than in your whole educational journey (unless you have studied philosophy). When you pass half of the book with the same grit, you should be able to go through any other piece of writing, while knowing its value from the first paragraph. If you complete it, nothing will be impossible for you to express in words, besides the sound of silence. In the age of LLMs, where the precision and complexity of our descriptions become digital creation, there is no better phenomenon to fully understand than how to mind words.
In neither of the books is a word strange in its context.
Yoga Sutras
Much earlier than our first philosopher, the processes of the mind that process words were described with utmost precision. In a similar fashion, sentence by sentence, a mystery which most people still struggle to acknowledge was mapped from the sensations to the depths of our being, without missing an aspect. Its difficulty does not come from reading it, but rather from accepting that we are so simple as it is described there. Accepting, though, should only come after each sentence is tested on our being, as knowing what a sensation is does not make our sensory organs function better, nor will we experience life better if we know that light of different wavelengths creates the perception of sight. Looking at our own eyes cannot be done by sight, but with awareness: awareness that there are countless cells that work together to create the world we see, and, further on, can envision and feel.
To benefit from it, you need trust. Trust that the author might be right in every aspect, at least for the reading time, as afterward, every aspect of the state of the mind can be tested scientifically on yourself. You only need to observe how you happen; therefore, how you are. During this time, when our brains are on the edge most of our working time, understanding how our thinking works improves how our agents work. Additionally, a good idea, an authentic idea, only comes if we know how to find it, and scattering with a monkey mind will find only copies, which nowadays are one prompt away, therefore worthless. Lastly, it is better to know how to find that one idea that will make our projects better, to analyze it, to understand its implications and causalities, since implementation is one prompt away.
To present an idea in a book is a fool’s job. To cover the fundamentals with all aspects within a few pages is what you will find in those books.
The Computer and the Brain
If you want to understand how an invention works, I suggest finding the people who invented it and trying to figure out the conditions that created that possibility. Many presented their insights regarding computers, which nowadays are almost alive, but no one seems to me to cover it better than John von Neumann. It is not the mathematical or programming knowledge and abilities that made him catch this idea, but also his philosophical process, without which the fundamental principles he understood would remain for too few to grasp. He made the great effort to identify and describe the connections that made devices that, for many, are impossible to replicate understandable and easy to learn how, by the power of electricity passing through material, we can now connect at the speed of light. Analogies are plenty in this book. Analogies between subjects that are too far apart for someone without deep knowledge to find. Analogies are connections which, when described properly, make understanding instantaneous, but this doesn’t mean we are absolved of learning more about it.
Of the three recommendations, this is the easiest to understand, but the one with the most to learn around it, as now, learning about artificial intelligence means learning about everything else that made it possible. The internet, the computer, the microchip, programming language, mathematics, quantum mechanics, philosophy, etc. There is no stopping until fire, and beyond, as artificial intelligence is based on our intelligence, knows our knowledge, and uses our resources, but we give directions, which only come from insights, which are emotional by nature, emotions that the digital agents do not have yet. This is where the focus should be if you want to have clear insights, therefore clear directions, for authentic ideas, for change for the better.
One book shows how to think, another what is thinking, another what to think about.