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An exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind.
What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of the new and familiar is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not. Computers, like us, confront limited space and time, so computer scientists have been grappling with similar problems for decades. And the solutions they’ve found have much to teach us.
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths show how algorithms developed for computers also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one’s inbox to peering into the future, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
Brian Christian
Brian Christian is the bestselling author of the acclaimed books The Most Human Human, Algorithms to Live By, and The Alignment Problem, which have been translated into nineteen languages. A researcher at the University of Oxford, he lives in San Francisco.
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Tom Griffiths
Tom Griffiths is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness and Culture in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University. He also directs Princeton's Computational Cognitive Science Lab, a research group focused on understanding the mathematical foundations of human cognition, and the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence, a new effort that supports innovative research efforts in AI and related fields. Griffiths is coauthor of the book Algorithms to Live By, and his award-winning research has been published in venues that include Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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