Except 90% of his examples have only ever been experienced by a Silicon Valley geek, and those that the rest of us have come across, like algorithms to make recommendations to you on shopping websites and video streaming sites, in my experience, are always so terrible that they are almost funny. It was one of those descriptions of how a technology influences every moment of your life, as the author takes us through a typical day. But just reading the prologue put my hackles up. Not only an interesting subject but one I have a personal interest in as I had some involvement in artificial intelligence many moons ago. As the subtitle puts it, this is the quest for the ultimate learning machine that will remake our world.

Pedro Domingos takes us into the world of computer programs that solve problems through learning, exploring everything from back propagating neural networks to Bayesian algorithms, looking for the direction in which we might spot the computing equivalent of the theory of everything, the master algorithm that can do pretty much anything that can be done with a computer (Turing proved a long time ago that there will always be some things that can't). I am really struggling to remember a book that has irritated me as much as this one, which is a shame because it's on a very interesting and significant subject.

The master algorithm book