The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World Audiobook

Algorithms increasingly run our lives. They find books, movies, jobs, and dates for us, manage our investments, and discover new drugs. More and more, these algorithms work by learning from the trails of data we leave in our newly digital world. Like curious children, they observe us, imitate, and experiment. And in the world’s top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask.

Machine learning is the automation of discovery—the scientific method on steroids—that enables intelligent robots and computers to program themselves. No field of science today is more important yet more shrouded in mystery. Pedro Domingos, one of the field’s leading lights, lifts the veil for the first time to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He charts a course through machine learning’s five major schools of thought, showing how they turn ideas from neuroscience, evolution, psychology, physics, and statistics into algorithms ready to serve you. Step by step, he assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner—the Master Algorithm—and discusses what it means for you, and for the future of business, science, and society.

If data-ism is today’s rising philosophy, this book will be its bible. The quest for universal learning is one of the most significant, fascinating, and revolutionary intellectual developments of all time. A groundbreaking book, The Master Algorithm is the essential guide for anyone and everyone wanting to understand not just how the revolution will happen, but how to be at its forefront.

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“This book is a sheer pleasure, mixed with education. I am recommending it to all my students—those who studied machine learning, those who are about to do it, and those who are about to teach it. The author succeeds not only in presenting an accurate and entertaining journey through the methodological ideas behind machine learning, but also in embedding those ideas in a colorful tapestry of philosophical questions concerning the ultimate capacity of man to emulate itself. A must read for both realists and futurists.”

— Judea Pearl, professor of computer science at UCLA and winner of the A. M. Turing Award